


The Past Forgotten

by Snowgrouse



Category: Original Work, Thief of Bagdad (1940), كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة | Kitaab 'alf layla wa-layla | One Thousand and One Nights
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Play, Anal Sex, Androgynous male character, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BDSM, Bisexuality, Breathplay, Cunnilingus, Dark Het, F/M, Fantasy, Fellatio, First Time, Frotting, Heroine/Villain, Heterosexual Anal Sex (female receiving), Historical, Historical Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Islamic Metaphysics, Light BDSM, M/M, Magic, Magic as sex aid, Middle Ages, Muslim Character(s), Oral Sex, Origin Story, Reincarnation, Romance, Soul Bond, Spiritual, Squirting, The Golden Age of Islam, The Thousand And One Nights - Freeform, Voyeurism, costume porn, heterosexual anal sex, villain origin story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-08 08:05:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowgrouse/pseuds/Snowgrouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To spare Ahmad's life, Yassamin offers to marry Jaffar, despite loathing him from the bottom of her heart. To her, Jaffar is a demon, yet she soon discovers Jaffar is a man tormented by demons of his own: those of his own past. His ardent love for her relates to those demons in some way, but how? Now that he is king, he could have any woman he wanted, yet he chose her and only her. Why is he so obsessed with her?</p><p>***</p><p>
  <i>"Why me?" she asks.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He casts down his eyes, his lashes sharp and jagged upon his cheeks. "Because I am an old fool," he sighs. "When I first saw you in my crystal, I thought I had found something I'd lost." He lifts his gaze but says no more, swallowing thickly, as if the words were sticky in his throat.</i>
</p><p>
  <i> Found what?  "Jaffar. Tell me."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He shakes his head. "It was but an illusion. An illusion I projected upon the princess in my crystal, nothing to do with the woman who sits with me here today."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"What did you see in your crystal?"</i>
</p><p>
  <i> For a long while, he hesitates, then moves his hand to her temple.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"I wish I knew. Would you allow me to try and find out?"</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> We discover what made Jaffar the embittered tyrant he is at the beginning of the film and why he has an obsession with a woman he has never met before. The Jaffar of the film was partially based on the historical Ja'far ibn Yahya of the Barmakids, and this story presumes that they were the same man and that he survived the massacre of his family by Harun al-Rashid.

_Though I am silent, one within me weeps._  
_My soul shall rend the painted veil apart._  
\--Hafiz

***

The headsman lifts his axe.

Yassamin does not open her eyes, but lowers her head and whispers surrender.

Jaffar calls out to the guards, telling them to halt Ahmad's execution. Yet there is no triumph in his voice as he does so, no lustful smile upon his face and she finds this peculiar: even as he unties her hands and helps her step down from the parapet, his face is a stern mask with no trace of mirth or even disappointment.

And so, the axe does not fall: the crowd roars in outrage, then breaks into a riot as she and Ahmad are led back into the palace. They don't riot for Ahmad the tyrant, let alone her, the virgin pawn, but because they have been denied blood. Thus, the rabble turn upon each other to sate their lust for violence, yet Yassamin could not care less for her own safety as the guards drag her through the raging crowd. She has sold herself, her innocence to a man she loathes: what has she to fear now? 

***

She signs the marriage contract without looking up at Jaffar. The judge rolls up the sheet and smiles, wishing Yassamin, daughter of Mahmoud and Jaffar, son of Yahya many happy years together; many happy years and as many healthy sons. As the judge closes the heavy door behind himself, she cannot help but think--with an edge of hysteria--that it is not unlike the door of a tomb closing. For she has killed herself to spare Ahmad, she thinks as she washes the ink from her fingertips. Ahmad lives, yet now it is as if Yassamin were dead, dead to herself, Ahmad and her life before this day. He would not have wished for her to do this, she knows it: he would have preferred for them to have died gloriously, heroically together, to have gone on together beyond even death. Yet she knows no one who has returned from the land of death to tell his tale, and would rather Ahmad lived instead. 

And for that, Ahmad's princess must die. There is but Jaffar's queen, now. 

Her hair hangs down over her face, her veil is askew, and she still does not look up at Jaffar as she starts to unbutton her jacket. Yet he is there, silent, wordless in the long shadows, himself the longest of them, unflickering. It is as if she sees herself from above, calmly observing herself as she steps closer to him, closer. Her fingers fumble over the buttons, shaking, and she finds tears rolling down her cheeks, falling over the whiteness of her breasts as she exposes herself to him. "Here; take what you so desire," she tries to say, but her voice suffocates into a sob, her fear swallowing her defiance like his shadow now swallows her body. 

He reaches out to her, his fingers pausing over the curve of her breasts, nearly touching, then hesitating. Instead, he lifts her chin with his hand. "That will not be necessary." He gazes at her for a long while and she wonders what he sees: she thinks she spies a sadness in his eyes, perhaps even pity. 

It is then that he casts his eyelashes down and sighs, shaking his head.

He buttons up her jacket and tucks her hair back underneath her veil, then kisses her forehead. "His life is spared."

***

She enters the dungeon running, with hope in her heart, exclaiming in delight as she throws her arms around Ahmad. "He's commuted your sentence. Exile instead of death. You are to be sent over the Sindh and Abu is allowed to come with you," she murmurs as she covers his neck in kisses. "Oh, it's so much better than I could have expected--"

Yet Ahmad does not embrace her back. His eyes are blank, and for a moment she wonders if he is blind once more. 

"Did you lie with him?"

She stiffens, cold shock splashing through her, freezing her limbs, all her hair standing on end. "No."

He pulls back, looking at her from head to toe, taking in her smudged kohl, her slipped veil, the wrinkled front of her dress. "I don't believe you."

"He did not lay a hand on me, I swear."

"But he will. Sooner or later. You are now his wife, are you not?"

She cannot find an answer, and has to cast her eyes down to hide her fury from him. She has saved his life, and he is still jealous, the ungrateful--does he truly imagine she could--? She digs her nails into her palms and hisses. "I did what I did out of love for you. You must know that." For Ahmad is the one who's now free, while she is the one imprisoned, body and soul. Can't he see that? 

Now it's Ahmad's turn to remain silent. He turns away, hugs his arms and stares at the wall. 

"Am I to never see you again?"

"That was the condition." She hugs him from behind. "Ahmad. I could not bear the thought of you dying, you know that. You are worth so much more alive. And I can send letters--"

"Written with his naked back for a writing desk, I suppose."

"Ahmad, what has come over you?" She is choking back tears. "Do you think I could ever love that monster? He may do what he wishes with my body, but my heart will always be yours. Surely you know that."

He turns around and hugs her, grudgingly, tucking his chin over her head. "I know." 

She wonders if he says these words to convince himself, wonders what he is convincing himself of when he kisses her goodbye. It is not how a last kiss should be, not how one should be like at all: it is cold, their lips but brushing together. She opens her mouth, pulls him close, demanding more passion, demanding what is rightfully hers. This is the last time she can kiss the man she loves, after all. She's violent in her need, and while he responds at first, he soon makes a pained noise and pulls back, as if bitten.

"No."

She pulls back, but she cannot see Ahmad's face for her tears. With a sob, she tears herself away and does not look back.


	2. Chapter 2

For months after, Yassamin hides her tears underneath her veil. She pretends she does not exist, keeps her eyes cast down, her steps as quiet as possible on the marble floors. The shah married a ghost, they whisper, or a woman half-dead. Maybe she hides herself to hide some terrible illness; a sore-ravaged face, the bloodied lips of a consumptive. It is no wonder the wedding ceremony has been delayed indefinitely, and this makes people nod knowingly, taking it as yet another sign of Jaffar's wisdom, his foresight. Think of all that expense, all those well-wishes for a woman who might expire well before the year is over. Why he married her they don't know; he already has her father's lands and a sickly girl-child too ill to bear heirs is little more than a burden. 

They don't care to lower their voices, so all these whispers reach her ears. And on her darkest days, she wishes the rumours of her illness were true indeed. She toys with the idea of going to the bazaar and kissing the sickest of beggars to hasten her end. From behind the lattice, she sees a physician pass by, and thinks of asking him for a swift poison, for she cannot think of a drug that would heal a broken heart.

What astonishes her is that Jaffar leaves her alone, gives room for her and her sorrow to breathe. Not once does he command her to keep him company, busying himself with the running of his kingdom instead. No longer does he fervently court her, circle around her like a cat starved of caresses, professing his love. It is the strangest thing, and she doesn't know whether to be grateful or insulted. 

Not once does he lay a hand on her, not once does he take her to his bed. Instead, he gives her a bedroom of her own: a magnificent, canopied bed, with slave girls to sleep beside her, to keep her company and to keep her warm. Yet she shoos the girls away, because she is not in the mood for company: she hugs her loneliness close to her chest, for it is the only friend and confidante she has now. 

Every night, she curls up amidst Jaffar's blue silks, soaking the down of his pillows with her tears. 

***

At night, she dreams the dreams she has always dreamt. She rarely sees faces in these dreams, for they are that old--they are the earliest memories she has, going far back to the days of her infancy. But she knows the dreams through her senses: knows them through their colours, their temperatures, their scents. 

One of these dreams is a nightmare in grays and browns, wet and cold, clouded. Noisy, crowded, muddy. The metallic taste of hunger, of illness fills her mouth, and from all sides, she is ambushed by death. Everyone she has ever loved is dead, and when she tries to remember them, tries to recall their names, she is swallowed up by fever and can see no more.

Her other dream is filled with sunlight and fragrant flowers, with the green grass of her father's garden. And always, always, there's the warm presence of another in the garden with her: someone who cares for her, someone who protects her. Someone who loves her. She can feel his hand taking hers, squeezing it, his voice telling her he has been waiting for her, waiting to take her away. That he will always keep her safe, until the end of time. 

Even within the dream, Yassamin now thinks of how foolish, how dangerous it was to have dreamt it in the first place: it had made her believe in benevolent princes and benevolent djinn, made her believe there was someone watching over her, waiting to rescue her. 

Foolish or not, it is the happier dream that makes her weep upon awakening. 

And thus, her mornings, noons and evenings are filled with weeping. Until one autumn evening, she finds she has run out of tears. She is empty, at least tonight, of self-pity, perhaps even of her tears for Ahmad. She knows she needs to fill her mind with something else, to busy herself with something other than sorrow. She doesn't know what with, but she knows she cannot lie here passively a moment longer.

She cannot sleep, so she wraps herself in thick robes and makes her way to Jaffar's quarters.

It is near midnight, but Jaffar is still awake, hunched over a low writing table, surrounded by scrolls and the bitter scent of seal wax. As the guard closes the door behind Yassamin, Jaffar finally looks up and reaches out his hand. "Come. I could use a secretary."

"Isn't that a man's job?" she asks as she settles on the cushions beside him, a safe distance away from him. Trade agreements, pacts, diplomatic letters all litter the table. 

He nods, laughing a little. "Especially that of a Barmakid vizier's. Even when he has become king. Once a civil servant, always a civil servant." He closes yet another letter with wax, with the caliphal seal. "I have my assistants, but can never trust them to get things right. And thus, you find me, going over every single letter long into the night. It's a bad habit, I know. But I cannot sleep otherwise."

She peers at the letter he's currently holding. "You mixed your titles up." She points at his signature. "That should be _Commander_ of the Faithful, not _Defender_. Or did you mean _Defender of the Faith_ instead?"

"Ah, you are right. It's been a long day and I--" 

He lowers the letter, looking at her instead. She starts, realising she may have been overly familiar. She's slipped, overstepped with a man she barely knows, a man she does not even like--

"You _are_ a natural," he laughs, considering her for a while with a newfound curiosity. 

"I--I used to do this with my father. I'm sorry."

"No, no; there's nothing to be sorry about. Many women have bested me with the pen, both in eloquence and accuracy." He makes a point of stacking all the letters and scrolls, finishing his business for the day. When he's done, he twirls his quill in his hand playfully, with a wry smile tugging at his lips. 

"Now, then. To what do I owe the honour of your visit, my lady?" There is some wicked mockery in his voice, but also a delight, a little spark of the desire that so frightens her, makes her sinews stiffen in fear still. 

She curls in on herself a little more, stares at her hands and does not look up. "Any news of Ahmad?"

Jaffar sighs, with not a little jealousy. "I have not had him killed, if that's what you're asking." He stabs his quill into the inkwell and gets up. "Come. I'll show you."

He wraps his robes tighter around himself and presses one of the richly decorated tiles on the wall, a golden cheetah curled around a golden gazelle. Tile by tile, the wall falls away to reveal a secret passage, similar to ones in her father's palace. She is familiar with them, yet has never entered one. Secret passages were dangerous, her mother had told her. They were death traps, his father had chimed in, nodding sagely. She had always been forbidden to go near them, her parents afraid that she would get lost, caught in their depths, suffocated behind thick pink marble.

And now, Jaffar awaits her at the door of one such entrance, holding out a lantern and beckoning to her with a smile. With a sudden thrill spiralling through her, she takes a step forwards and enters the corridor. 

The blue tiles fold and enclose them within, whispering like leaves.

A few steps down, a disappointingly short distance away, they arrive at a door. Jaffar opens it to reveal a small chamber, with plain brickwork walls. Its vaulted ceiling and its cool draught remind her of the shabestan underneath the palace, yet miniature in size. A summer harem only large enough for one woman instead of hundreds, yet the only woman living here would have to be a water-nymph: there is a small pool set into the floor, around which are arranged cushions and a small portable writing desk, not unlike the one in Jaffar's quarters.

Jaffar lights other lamps from the one he's carrying, gesturing for her to sit down beside the pool. "It's not exactly the cup of Jamshid, but it will do."

She gazes into the pool. The surface of the water is black, as if she were staring into one of Jaffar's inkwells. "Show me."

Jaffar sits down cross-legged on the other side of the pool, shrugging tension out of his shoulders. He closes his eyes and breathes, his hands upturned, resting over his knees. He stays like that for long moments, frowning in frustration, as if her presence was making it more difficult for him to concentrate. Halfway into his trance--almost as an afterthought, it seems--he undoes his turban and loosens the sash of his robe, as if to breathe more easily. The musk of his hair oil makes her nostrils flare, makes her stir with unease; that, and this being the first time she has seen him without a head-covering. 

She has seen mystics before, fakirs singing God's name like that of a lost lover, reeling in ecstasy. Yet there is a unique and devastating sensuality to Jaffar's trance, a debauchery to the flush of his lips, the way his perfumed hair now curls around his temples, cheeks. He lets the syllables of his spells slip from his mouth with an erotic delight, as if tasting them, licking them as they slide past his lips. This is no pious penitent on his way to the mosque or the fire-temple or the church, no; upon seeing him, you would imagine his house of worship to be the brothel, his altar that of the flesh. 

Maybe there is indeed a water-nymph in the well, Yassamin thinks, her head spinning. She has heard they demand tribute from mortal men through lovemaking; oh, maybe Jaffar has bargained with one, offering her sips of his virility in exchange for the gift of seeing far and wide. She imagines finned, blue-green hands caressing him, the nymph pulling him into the water with her with kisses, caresses; she leans over the pool to better see her. 

But there is nothing there, save for her own reflection. 

"Jaffar--"

He opens his eyes, and they are unreal--like knives, no, like ice, like knives, she is dizzy, dizzy, knives to her throat, stopping her breath--

"Look into the pool," he whispers, his voice softer than water, water stilling, coalescing, polishing itself into a mirror.

From the memory of her sister's letters, Yassamin knows the blue-domed city to be Samarkand. It's as sandy as the terrain that surrounds it, dotted with but a few patches of green here and there. Jaffar dips a finger into the water, into the door of a mighty house, seeking entrance. Ripple by ripple, the image solidifies into a plenitude of fountains, fresh fruit and long-haired cats lounging upon soft mattresses. And among the cats, there lounge two slightly browner and longer of limb: Ahmad and Abu resting upon silk cushions, in luxury not often afforded to exiles.

They seem tired, yet refreshed, safe in their surroundings. What she finds most curious, however, is the way Ahmad rests his head on Abu's shoulder, the way Abu seems to be sheltering him in his arms. They are seven years apart in age, yet Abu seems the older, wiser man--yes, a man; their exile seemingly having sloughed boyhood off him until few traces of it remain. 

At first, Yassamin is jealous. For should it not be _her_ shoulder, _her_ arms that Ahmad ought to be seeking shelter in? Should it not be she and not Abu offering him comfort, safety, counsel in the dark hours of the night?

She tries to whip up her jealousy, to stir it into a true storm, a satisfying rage. But as she looks at them, she finds it but a weak trickle, slipping through her fingers when she tries to grasp it. Instead, she feels the hunger-like pangs of defeat clutching at her stomach. She remembers tales of kings who were brought to their knees by slave boys wiser than their years; recalls that genre of poetry that celebrates the love of boys and men and declares it nobler, even, than the love of a man for a woman. And her wit is not that of Abu's, either; her knowledge of the outside world almost nonexistent in comparison to someone who's lived his entire life on the streets. She knows her books, knows her poetry, is well-versed in science like any noblewoman would be: but what good would her knowledge be in exile, in strange lands full of dangers, of bandits? She would be as useless, as lost as Ahmad himself. Maybe, then, it was Abu whom Ahmad needed; maybe it is only Abu who can make him truly happy.

"Can they see us?" she asks, her tongue thick in her mouth.

"No," Jaffar whispers. "And it's well that they don't, considering."

For now, Abu lifts Ahmad's chin and pulls him into a kiss. It is a different thing to see it than to but think it, and now Yassamin's jealousy finally stirs, rushes acidic through her heart and makes her dig her nails into her palms. It is the kiss _she_ had been yearning for, a kiss with open mouths, with slow, lingering tenderness, and in that moment she feels so alone, so abandoned, so forlorn. She had not been good enough, loyal enough to earn that kiss, she thinks, the old self-pity roiling through her soul once more. Even if that kiss was the one she had wanted more than anything else in the world, had hoped she could still claim one day; this the very kiss she had pawned her very body for, her virginity for. She'd sacrificed herself because she had hoped--

She casts down her eyes. "Finish it. I don't want to see."

But even in his trance, Jaffar is merciless, cruel, licking his lips (how they always shine, how they are always too red as if painted, how it always looks as if he is ready to eat her up). She shivers as he leans over the pool slowly, sinuously like a lover, breathing in the sight: Ahmad stretching in Abu's arms, stirred into arousal by his lips, his hands. When Abu slides off his shirt and shalwars, Jaffar admires him as much as Ahmad does, running his eyes shamelessly over his body.

"Oh, but he _is_ a pretty lad. I should have made him my cupbearer, had I not known him for a troublemaker."

"Stop it." From the corner of her eye, she can see Ahmad undressing, a sight she had dreamt of for so long. But now it is a sight given to someone else, a pleasure he should have saved for _her,_ and now every piece of clothing falling onto the floor is an insult, a blow. When Ahmad drops his shalwars, she gasps in humiliation and shame, trying in vain to squeeze her eyes shut, to stop them from staring.

Jaffar's eyebrows fly up and he chuckles in surprise, in appreciation. "My, my! I should have made them _both_ my slaves. Then again, if he could not satisfy three hundred and sixty-five ladies with _that,_ he probably did not know how to use it."

"Stop it!"

She leans over the pond and the last thing she sees is Ahmad opening his legs for Abu, a king being taken by a boy instead of his queen, and she cannot bear it. She plunges her hand into the water and splashes violently, until the image finally breaks into a hundred ripples and dissolves.

Jaffar looks up at her, droplets of water glistening upon his eyebrows and his lips, his kohl running down his cheeks in mockery of tears. 

"So, my lady. Did you get what you wanted? Abu certainly seems to have got his."

"Don't you think I've been hurt enough?"

He considers her for a while, and she cannot tell if his eyes are hooded with pity or scorn. "Quite." He picks up his discarded turban and uses it to mop his face. "Time for bed."

His hand is warm, soothing on her shoulder as they make their way back upstairs, as if to make up for his mockery. 

Yet it is not his mockery that makes her toss and turn that night, unable to sleep. It was fair enough, and she had been such a fool. Maybe Abu was indeed the companion God had meant to guide Ahmad; maybe her rescuer, the guardian angel in her dream had not been Ahmad after all. 

She spends the rest of the night praying, accusing, abusing God: _Why did you not tell me? Why, why did you not tell me?_

At dawn, fatigued from sorrow and blasphemy, she falls asleep on her prayer rug.


	3. Chapter 3

For four days, she sits in her room without venturing outside. She sleeps, reads books: some of them sacred, some of them profane, but none give her comfort. So she lets sleep pull her into its arms again and in her waking hours, she speaks little and refuses food. The slave girls worry, plying her with sweet cakes, dried fruit, but all she can down are a few glasses of herbal tea.

By the fifth day, Jaffar himself arrives to see what ails her. 

She is curled up in her bed, staring at nothing in particular, quiet as he enters the room. She doesn't get up to greet him, just listens to his footsteps, to the sound of his hands moving and picking up objects beside her bed.

"My _alif,_ " he murmurs with something akin to tenderness, "now curled in on herself like a _meem._ Is there not anything I could offer to ease your mind, to loosen your limbs once more?" 

When the bed dips with his weight, she starts, lifting herself just a little too fast. She is about to snap at him, to tell him her limbs are fine, but it would be a lie. Her muscles ache from hunger and too many hours of sleep, and every little movement hurts. When she raises her eyes, she sees Jaffar kneeling on her bed, spreading his arms in a placating gesture, as if to show her he is unarmed. In his hand, he is holding one of her hairbrushes.

"May I?"

It is a strange request, but she is too tired to deny him. "If you must."

So there they sit, she upon her queenly bed, he behind her like a slave girl, undoing her braids and brushing her hair. And to her surprise, she welcomes it. It feels good to be touched like this, with such softness, tenderness. Even when it's Jaffar; even when she cannot quite believe he came here without an ulterior motive. She knows his touch for what it is and accepts it, accepts this chaste excuse for a caress--why not, she thinks. There's no harm in it; his concern seems genuine. His hands are warm and gentle, his long fingers massaging her scalp, lifting her hair out lightly, never pulling at it too hard. So she relaxes into his touch and lets herself be groomed, tended to, pampered a little.

"You're good at this," she mumbles, leaning back into his hands.

He chuckles. "I used to do this with one of my daughters, you see. She never liked her slave girls, especially when it came to dressing her hair. She would throw terrible fits, complaining that their hands were too rough, that they always pulled at her. Only her old father would do. So every day, I would brush and braid her hair before morning prayers and there, the tantrums stopped." 

He pauses to finish the first of her plaits, securing it with a ribbon. "She was my favourite and I was hers. When she was older, she even saved my life--with an apple, of all things. I will tell you about it sometime."

"You had a daughter?" 

His hands still on her hair. "Two. And a baby boy."

This must have been before she herself was born; his children would be adults, now. But she has never heard of them, and surely they would've made Jaffar a grandfather many times by now, unless-- 

She stiffens, her mind fumbling for fragments of stories she cannot quite remember. Jaffar resumes his strokes, the rasp of the brush the only sound in the room. So he pretends to brush and plait, and she pretends to breathe, until she cannot remain quiet any longer.

"What happened?"

"Harun happened." He sets the hairbrush down, his voice uneven, quiet now. "I will tell you about it sometime."

She turns to look at him and his eyes are pained, filling with tears. Quickly, he turns his face away and gets up, murmuring as if to himself. "Yes, I will tell you about it sometime."

She clasps his hand. "Why not tell me now?"

He lifts her hand, strokes it with his thumb. "When you are feeling better. Promise me you will eat something."

He kisses her hand, the scratch of his moustache and the warmth of his lips sending a flush of heat through her. Yet, she frowns. She does not know whether he sees her as a daughter or a lover, or something else entirely. Jaffar becomes more and more of a puzzle each day, she finds. Things were simpler when he--or the Jaffar she had known--had been but a single-minded, lust-addled suitor, a cruel tyrant out to destroy everyone in his path. She had never thought of him as a husband, as a tender father, as one who had suffered loss. 

In shame, she withdraws her hand and casts down her eyes, nodding. "I shall try."

"If there is anything I can do, anything at all, know that my door is always open."

He says it with such sincerity, such care that it makes her heart ache. She gazes up at him and sees he is looking at her the way he once did on his ship, the day he had come to her as bridegroom. _I want your love,_ he had said, yet he had never truly believed she could love him back. He had tried to give, then, just like he is trying to give her love now, whether or not she is capable of returning that love.

Yet she remembers the storm of jealousy in his eyes, engulfing the sea itself in its fury, remembers the sail of Ahmad's boat sinking underneath the waves of Jaffar's rage. Just like then, she recoils from the beast he had become when she had denied him and chosen another. And her fear is no longer for the sake of Ahmad's soul, but her own: well-meant or not, Jaffar's love overwhelms her so that she feels small, trapped. What if that love-fury should crush her, too, break her like a wave upon rocks if she spoke the wrong word, made the wrong gesture? Queens have been drowned in the Tigris for less. Even now, it's as if the blue of Jaffar's eyes drags her down, down underneath its waves, and she cannot breathe.

She plucks at the hairbrush. "Thank you, Jaffar. You may go."

***

She lies upon the green grass of her father's garden, with but birds and dragonflies for company. She lies there and waits, yet this time there are no comforting words drifting into her ears, no comforting hand reaching out to clasp hers. There are but birds and dragonflies. Birds and dragonflies. 

And by the gate, the biggest of black crows, perched as they do beside dying animals. 

"Yassamin," the crow croaks and hops closer, "Yassamin," it cries and it awaits, awaits, staring at her, ready to pluck out her heart. 

She awakens with a start, clasping her hand to her chest, her heart beating like a drum. She closes her eyes and her vision swims with battlefields, drums and crows, drums and crows, and she forces her eyes open to dissolve the images. She holds her breath, swallows down her panic for long minutes, forces it down her throat, knowing she will never get back to sleep now.

And thus, she sets out to find Jaffar. She asks herself why, but realises she does not want to hear the answers. She is lonely, that much she admits to herself. Even Jaffar's hand in hers would be better than nothing, she reasons; at least it would be real and not a figment. She has slept for so long for so many weeks she is starting to lose sense of what's real and what's not, and needs something to ground herself. 

It is early evening, and he is not in his quarters yet. There is a curtained alcove in his bedroom with tea-making supplies: she busies herself with these while she waits, the ritual of measuring leaves and water soothing her somewhat.

When Jaffar enters, it is with a crash, and from the sounds of it, he is not alone. Fear stiffens Yassamin's muscles and automatically, she stills behind the curtain. She knows the sounds of drunken men, knows to beware them, knows how to make herself quiet and still. 

Yet, to her surprise, it is not a man who now follows Jaffar into the room, but a slave girl. 

"What is your will tonight, master?" the girl asks, warily. It's not a voice Yassamin recognises, so this girl must be new, perhaps only freshly arrived at the palace.

Yassamin dares a peek from behind the curtain and sees Jaffar throwing himself on his bed, theatrically. "The forbidden pleasures tonight, I think," he slurs, beckoning to the girl.

When the girl does not respond, Jaffar shrugs and undresses himself, his hands tangling in the silk of his turban. "Come. Don't be shy."

"Mistress Halima told me you wanted me to... to put on a play of sorts?"

Jaffar nods and gestures to her. "Of sorts. Come. Amila, isn't it?"

Yassamin's breath catches in her throat as she finally sees Amila, kneeling on Jaffar's bed: it's as if she is looking at a lost sister, with pale skin, almond eyes and a full, red mouth. A coincidence, she thinks, maybe a type Jaffar has always preferred, if it were not for what Amila is wearing: a suit in powder-blue and pink silks, with golden vines wrapping around her chest, her arms. The suit Jaffar had first embraced Yassamin in, perhaps the exact same one--Yassamin lifts her hand to her mouth to suffocate the noise in her throat. As Jaffar strokes Amila's cheek, her neck, her breast, Yassamin knows not what to feel: disgust, revulsion rather than jealousy, she is sure. 

Yassamin is staggering with vertigo, as anyone would be when looking at their own mirror image acting independently of themselves: watching herself tremble as Jaffar slides her veil off her head, as he unbuttons her jacket. Yassamin's own hands come to cover her breasts, her sex as Amila's are exposed to Jaffar's gaze, to the lingering caresses of his long, brown fingers. But it is of no use: to all intents and purposes, it is Yassamin and not a slave girl who is now standing naked before Jaffar, in all her whiteness, softness, fear.

Finally, Amila is naked and Jaffar pulls her into his arms, to rest face to face with him upon the bed. Despite the heat of the braziers, Yassamin can tell Amila is shaking. "Which forbidden pleasures did you mean, master?"

Jaffar cups Amila's cheek with a tenderness rarely afforded to slaves. "I don't want to get you with child." Jaffar pauses, and it's clear the shadow that now passes over his face is the memory of his daughter, of apples that had saved his life but not hers. "Every joining beyond the child-making one is considered unlawful, is it not? Therefore, I must sin, and you should not count it as a blemish upon your soul, for you would merely be acting upon my request. If any blemishes remain, I promise to say additional prayers until those blemishes are removed--God is merciful, and will surely forgive you before he forgives me. Therefore, Amila: will you sin with me?"

It is the strangest of things to observe, to listen to: Jaffar taking a slave girl and yet expressing worry for her soul, for his own. Even in his drunkenness, he is careful not to frighten her, but strokes her arms, thighs, breasts, kissing her softly until she relaxes in his arms. Only then does he slip his hand lower, opening her legs with his fingers; there, he rubs, rubs until she gasps against his mouth.

"Oh--I will, master. I will sin with you."

"Call me Jaffar."

"Jaffar." She is bolder, now, smiling as she caresses his chest, his arms. She cannot be a complete virgin, if young, because her measured touches speak of experience: she flicks her thumbs across his nipples, nips at the soft skin of his stomach, his hips. When he twitches, gasps, she soothes his skin with the softest of kisses, mixing pain with pleasure until Jaffar pulls her to himself roughly, shaking with lust, devouring her mouth with a guttural snarl. "More, my sweet," he breathes between kisses, licking at her mouth, her neck, her shoulder. "More."

Amila slides her hand between Jaffar's legs, making him groan around a mouthful of breast. "Were you after the pleasures of the hand and the mouth, master?"

"Yes," he rasps, closing his eyes in delight. "And I told you," he laughs, "Jaffar."

"Yes, Jaffar," she grins and lifts his cock into her hand.

After the sight of Ahmad and Abu in the pool, Jaffar's nudity should not shock Yassamin, but it does: his cock is at least as large as Ahmad's, if not larger. Amila's eyes widen as she strokes it, kisses it, licks it into hardness. It's as if she had expected it to stop growing already, yet he keeps on swelling, lengthening within the circle of her small, white hand. It's a prick large enough to frighten a concubine, let alone a virgin: how it could ever fit inside the little split mound between Amila's legs, Yassamin has no idea. But as she thinks of it, Yassamin suffocates another noise, this time a mix of fear and arousal, pressing her thighs tighter together so as to stop them from trembling so. Amila is not yet wet, but Yassamin is, and she hates herself for it: hates her body for being so eager to join with the man now writhing on the bed, a man she is supposed to loathe with all her being.

Amila takes Jaffar into her mouth, and it is then that he closes his eyes, turns his head upon the pillows, quivers as if in fever and whispers softly. "My princess." 

His surrogate princess but raises her eyebrows and slickens him with her mouth. The real princess shakes behind her curtain, shakes so she fears tearing the fabric, giving her presence away, but she cannot, cannot. She gags as Amila gags, Jaffar's cock stretching her lips, and she thinks she might pass out any moment. Because it's she Jaffar is making love to, and her body imagines it, _feels_ it: it's as if she were made of but lust, heat, all of her body but cunny, thigh and buttock. 

Mesmerised, she becomes the audience of her own debauching as Amila straddles Jaffar, as she slowly takes him inside herself. Amila has to use oil to take even half of him inside of herself, little gasps of pain breaking from her mouth before Jaffar pulls her down for a kiss. The sight is monstrous: the pale, fat lips of her cunny stretched around the brutal width and length of Jaffar's prick, its redness, slowly sinking inside of her as he urges her to ride him. 

Amila gasps, tries to lift herself off his cock. "Jaffar. I can't--"

"Shh. Breathe, my child. And don't worry, I won't finish inside you."

Amila keens, the muscles of her back tense as she curls on top of him, and Yassamin wonders if it were easier if Amila were in love: she is still so frightened, still so ill at ease it's terrible to watch. No matter how well-trained a concubine, she cannot hide her pain, cannot fully pretend she derives pleasure from their joining. 

Drunk or no, Jaffar is aware of her discomfort, stroking her back with his hands, steadying her with his kisses. "Easy, my dear. We have only just arrived at the part where I need you to play. You might enjoy this."

"Yes?" Amila pants, tries to breathe deep, rocking on top of Jaffar, sliding upon his prick more easily, now.

Jaffar hesitates a little, his face growing more serious. Even from across the room, Yassamin can see his eyes are wide, frighteningly wide as he cups Amila's cheek with his hand. It's not clear if he is trying to enspell her, but what he now voices is not a request. It is a command.

"Slap me."

"No! It's not as if you _mean_ to hurt me, master; I swear I will be fine, I just need to breathe, I--"

He stops her panicked babble with a finger to her lips. "No, you do not understand. Imagine that I have killed your father, tried to kill your beloved. Would you not slap me, then?"

Amila draws in a heaving breath, shivering on top of him. Disgusted, she gives him a small slap, little more than a tap on his cheek.

"No, no, no," he shakes his head, annoyed, pushing his hips up with deliberate cruelty, making her cry out. " _Slap me,_ girl! Call me a murderer, a tyrant, a brute."

She hits him again, with more force behind her arm, and he hisses. "Harder."

She hits him even harder, Jaffar's hair flying from the force of the blow, the slap ringing in the room; he but groans and bucks into her. "Harder!"

She breaks down in tears. "I'm sorry, master. I can't, I simply can't--" She pulls off him, whimpering in pain, shock, incomprehension. "I'm so sorry, master. You can cast me out, sell me to another, but I can't understand what you ask of me, master, I can't--" Her face is an ugly, contorted mask from weeping, her cheeks shining with tears. She holds her hand between her legs, as if checking for blood.

He groans loudly in frustration, clutching the sheets with his hands, staring at the ceiling. He inhales through his teeth, seemingly trying to control himself in order not to take his rage out on Amila, then breathes out, not looking at her. His voice is shaking. "You're dismissed."

Hastily, Amila dresses, clutches her robes around herself and leaves the room, wiping her tears with her hand.

For long moments Jaffar but lies there, unmoving. His chest hitches, and it is only then that Yassamin realises that he is weeping. A sob shakes his chest, another, and as he curls up on his side, his prick is soft again, still glistening wet from Amila. He lies there, trembling, trying to hold back the sobs, punching his pillows in his fury. 

Yassamin does not dare breathe.

Jaffar picks up his cup of wine and downs it, and she can see rivulets of kohl running down his cheeks, hears his hiccough as his sobs hamper his swallowing. With an infuriated roar, he tosses the cup across the room, shattering it against a wall, then throws himself down on the bed once more. It's there that he keens like a man tortured, an animal butchered, a terrifying sound from the throat of a king. He buries his face in the pillows and weeps, weeps until he can weep no more. 

She waits for an hour, two, before she dares tiptoe out of the room.


	4. Chapter 4

She lies upon the green grass of her father's garden. A man's hand takes hers, but she refuses to look up to see his face. She pulls her hand away and curls up, burying her face in her knees.

Her dreams are full of caresses that burn her like acid, full of kisses that taste like ash in her mouth, full of muffled screams. She begs, prays for deliverance, wetting the pillow with her tears in her sleep.

The crow sits beside the gate and tilts its head.

***

Maybe, now that she has nothing left, it would be best if she forgot. Forgot about Ahmad, forgot about herself, let Jaffar have his way. For it pains her that after last night--especially after last night--she still feels no love for Jaffar in her heart. Pity, yes, and her body had felt lust, this she admits. But her heart is empty, and she wishes it were not so. In her heart's chambers, she calls out for love and finds nothing, nothing in the space Ahmad had left; she calls out once more and hears but a hollow echo of her own voice. And she feels terribly, devastatingly alone. 

Maybe, maybe if she forgot who she was, she could love Jaffar, be whatever it is that he wants her to be. Mistress, wife, the mother to his children. For she cannot see these things in herself, but another woman might. The desire to become that other woman overwhelms her: maybe it is a side of her that has always existed, and she but needs to forget herself for that other, less deficient woman to emerge. For now, her self is little more than pain, and she wants to slough herself, her pain like an old skin, make way for someone not herself.

And she knows where to find forgetfulness, knows where it blossoms still. So she makes her way to the pleasure palace, her pink feet light upon the pink marble steps. 

She finds the blue rose, frozen in time by Jaffar's spells, but also finds Jaffar himself beside it, together with his astrologer. Jaffar sits on a bench facing away from her; neither man has yet noticed her. Therefore, again, she silences her steps; again, she hides herself from Jaffar's sight and spies upon him, this time from behind one of the stone lions. 

Jaffar fondles the petals of the blue rose, lost in thought. "At first, it was Harun I wanted to forget. And now... do you know, Khurshid, I wonder if now, it would not be better if I should forget myself."

Her exact words. She does not know whether to laugh, to cry, a hysterical laughter bubbling up inside her. She bites down on the bubbles, bites her tongue, curls up tighter behind the stone lion's thigh.

Khurshid sits down beside Jaffar with a long-suffering sigh. It is clear they have had this conversation before; that this is not a new mood of Jaffar's. "Is it truly yourself you want to forget, master, or the lady?"

"Perhaps it is both. It was Jaffar the lover that nearly ruined Jaffar the man. In my heart of hearts, I know Jaffar the lover brings nothing but disaster. It was thanks to him Harun--"

"--let us not dwell on the past, master." Khurshid's voice is kind, his hand firm upon Jaffar's shoulder.

They sit there in silence, and a thousand memories flicker through Yassamin's mind, even if she can only gather scraps to make sense of it all. But she remembers, now, oh; and what she remembers makes her reel with nausea. She had heard of the Barmakids' fall, four years before her birth, but just like everyone else, she had never learned the true reasons behind the catastrophe. She wonders if anyone but Harun and the Barmakids themselves knew, for people could but speculate. She'd heard tales of Harun's jealousy, of the Barmakids' golden palaces, armies, and the more fanciful tales of illicit affairs and wild orgies having spelled doom for the greatest family of viziers Persia had ever known. By the time Yassamin had been told the story, it was a horrid fairytale of the past, something spoken of in whispers, and had therefore seemed somehow magical, unreal.

Yet here sits a man who saw all of it, every drop of blood that had flowed through the streets of Baghdad that day.

All the viziers and forty of their relatives hung, beheaded, cut up and impaled upon spikes at the gates of Baghdad. Men, women, children torn to pieces by Harun's animal jealousy. The image is as vivid as if she had seen it herself, and to imagine Jaffar witnessing it, before he was to be taken to the block--it turns her stomach. To have your entire family slain before your eyes as punishment, before you were slain yourself--she suffocates a retching noise in her throat. No wonder he has no trust in men, no wonder he is swift in his cruelty. She reels in her horror, staggers against the wall.

Yet a part of the story does not make sense. When the Barmakids fell, all of them fell. Yet somehow Jaffar, son of Yahya of the Barmakids still sits here, alive, the shadow of a family wronged: a living, breathing wound.

And it is a wounded man that now sighs, deep in his chest, wiping his eye with the corner of his sleeve. "I cannot help myself." He doesn't look at Khurshid, just at his hands. His voice is a low, pained whisper. "You know how it is said that during sleep, our souls leave our bodies and journey towards the divine source they came from? That at night, every soul returns to God's bosom? And mine--Khurshid, I knew my soul for a heathen one, but never more so than when I first laid eyes on her. Every night, it is _her_ my soul journeys to. It's in her bosom my soul yearns to rest in, and I cannot bear it." 

Each and every word falling from his lips is so heavy with pain it's hard to listen to him. Even if she can only see him in profile, she can see his eyes are staring wide, sees the panic in them, the desire to escape his past, his present. 

"What if I should become an entirely new man?" Jaffar says quietly. "I would not miss the nightmares. Maybe then, she would not think me a monster? Maybe that would be the key to this lock Fate has placed upon the door of my happiness? If I erased myself--the Jaffar I did not want to become in the first place--maybe then she would..." Jaffar goes quiet again, stares at his hands again. 

He bunches his robes in his fists and exhales. "I am tempted, Khurshid."

"Master. I apologise if my words seem harsh, but I cannot in good conscience leave them unsaid, since you sought my counsel. Hear me out, for I speak in kindness. Your mind is imbalanced with melancholy, and while forgetfulness may seem tempting now, it is Jaffar the lover that insists upon it. The man you yourself said turned into your ruin two decades ago. Would you let him destroy you, now that you are in the golden years of your life, now that you are the greatest man in all of Persia? Forgetfulness might be a blessing to a beggar with little to lose, but not to a king. No matter how much his heart aches, a king cannot forget himself if he is to keep his kingdom. Therefore, I can only advise moderation. Keep Jaffar the lover a close companion if you wish, but do not allow him to meddle in the affairs of Jaffar the king. Keep tears to the safety of your bedchamber, lest your enemies think you weak."

Jaffar's eyes flash, but he soon casts them down. "You are right, of course. As always."


	5. Chapter 5

Thus, the weeks pass, and neither Yassamin or Jaffar is allowed to forget. 

Until one day, to Yassamin's great surprise, Jaffar asks for her to join him on his ship. He has business in Arabia, he says. A small matter, but his presence is requested nevertheless--and a change of scenery would perhaps help her, too, he says. 

It is but a request, not a command, he says, and perhaps that is the reason why she agrees. That, and she knows she wants to rid herself of the palace and its thousand eyes and ears, the endless vicious gossip of the harem.

So she stands underneath the red sails once more, looks out upon the vast blue-green of the Arabian Sea, this time not as Jaffar's prisoner but as his willing companion. His presence, too, no longer oppresses her the way it had done before: it's as if the sea air helps him relax as well, now that his kingdom is but a small vessel, his subjects fewer in number. She finds she can converse with him with ease, more easily than with the uneducated maids or dull heiresses of the harem, and finds it a relief. On some nights, she even bests him at chess and he theatrically swears to never play with her again, yet every night he smiles, takes the board out once more and sits with her long into the night. 

And every night, she wonders if this is how he spent his time with his first wives, his concubines. If his eyes lingered upon them instead of the chess pieces, the way they linger upon her now. If the young Jaffar, too, when speaking of poetry, mounted such a spirited, articulated defense of modern, urban verse, dismissing the old nomadic romances of camels and campfires. If any of his wives saw him spill wine, mid-rant, and reached out to pat it from his cheek with the corners of their veils, the way she does now, surprising herself. Perhaps it is the wine, perhaps--

Jaffar stills, takes her by the wrist and cups her hand against his cheek. He looks into her eyes, but his gaze is turned inwards in recollection. When he speaks, his voice is as soft as it was the last time they were in this cabin, he the groom and she the reluctant bride.

"I often wonder what would have happened, had I taken you that day," he murmurs. "If you would have hated me forever." He pauses, wincing in self-pity. "Or maybe it is that you still hate me, and it would not have made any difference whatsoever."

When she does not answer him, he strokes her hand on his cheek, breathing heavily the way drunkards do, his eyes slow upon her face. "Or maybe you would have yielded." His eyes flash with heat and he presses a kiss to her palm, his tongue flicking out to steal her taste. "Yes, maybe you would have returned my love, once I had shown you what a tender lover I could be."

She withdraws her hand. "A tender lover does not rape," she snaps. 

"That's why I didn't," he snaps back, too loudly.

"Really? What about the blue rose? Do you still think I have forgiven you for that?"

"Do you think _I_ have forgiven myself that?" 

And his voice is so pained that she believes him, pities him as he stares at her in drunken fervour, his eyes (always so wide, always so devouring, always so endless) glistening with tears.

It's quiet in the cabin, the evening's light fleeing from them, darkness trailing its train over their chessboard. The moon is not yet full and they would need to light more lamps to continue their game, yet neither she or Jaffar move from their seats. The shadows lengthen until Jaffar breaks the silence with a whisper, reaching out to cup her cheek, with so much tenderness he barely touches her skin.

"Forgive me."

 _I am trying,_ she thinks, and the very thought astonishes her. Maybe the wine makes her admit it to herself; that she would rather be friends than enemies with him. Again, Jaffar is giving her a choice. Again, he refuses to force himself upon her; again, he waits for her. She may be afraid, but it is she who wields the power, here, power over the heart of a king. 

And in that moment, she is acutely aware of destiny, of history itself singing through her, offering itself to be shaped by her hands as it has been shaped by thousands of powerful women before her. Was it not Ishtar whose love, in heathen times, decided who would be king? Was it not the Simurgh who crowned the first shahs with her radiance? Was not the Prophet himself helped to greatness by his wives? All these thoughts and more race through her head as she cups Jaffar's hand to her lips in turn.

"Why me?" she asks, surprising herself, because it was not the question she had been meaning to ask.

He casts down his eyes, his lashes sharp and jagged upon his cheeks. "Because I am an old fool," he sighs. "When I first saw you in my crystal, I thought I had found something I'd lost." He lifts his gaze but says no more, swallowing thickly, as if the words were sticky in his throat.

Found what? The love of a woman? The memory of another? Whatever it is that old suitors look for in young girls, whatever makes them think they could recapture the days of their youth? "Jaffar. Tell me."

He shakes his head. "It was but an illusion. An illusion I projected upon the princess in my crystal, nothing to do with the woman who sits with me here today."

"What did you see in your crystal?"

For a long while, he hesitates, then moves his hand to her temple.

"I wish I knew. Would you allow me to try and find out?"

 _Find out, find out,_ his mind whispers against hers through his fingers, and she pulls back, as if she's just had an electric shock. The whisper quiets; his hand hovers on her temple, and she dares not breathe. Jaffar searches her eyes, apologetic.

"Don't think I'm... I don't mean to frighten you. I am not trying to take you."

Her heart gallops in her chest. "What is this, then? You were inside me, I--" It was as if she had been tasting something with nothing in her mouth, smelling a nonexistent perfume, touching something that wasn't there. Jaffar had stepped into the forecourt of her mind, then slipped out before she could grasp him. Before she could even tell whether what she had felt was discomfort or pleasure. 

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No. But what are you looking for?"

"Just one thing, one specific memory. I promise not to pry elsewhere. Close your eyes."

She breathes deep, closes her eyes and his shadow falls over her, plunging her into the moonless dark.

She can feel his hand on her temple, his body heat, can hear his breathing. He is in her mind, but he keeps his word, keeps his distance. He is an invisible presence, barely on the outskirts of her mind, an outside observer.

"Now. Tell me about your father's garden; about your earliest memory."

She remembers playing in the garden as a child, remembers clutching her doll, how she would soak it with her tears. She remembers her mother and her sisters asking her what was wrong, but she could never explain it, being too young to string words into sentences. The doll was not broken, they said. There was nothing wrong with it, they said, so why weep for it? Yet she would cradle it to her chest, unable to stop weeping.

The crow sits at the garden gate, waiting, waiting until she falls back on the grass, her tiny hands clasping the doll against her tiny body. 

"I want you to go further back, my child," the crow says, and it's as if she is tugged back, down, flicking through images as fast as changing dreams, spending a moment or two in each year, as if he is browsing her like a book, looking for a specific page, going further back, back.

And then the book ends, and it's dark again, and it's cold.

"Go beyond what you first remember, and go further, further, to the last thing you remember. Show me."

She is huddled in an alleyway, her clothes in tatters, her dark brown feet caked with mud and she is shivering with fever. She is weeping once more, clutching a doll in her arms, cold and soft, but it isn't a doll. She turns to look at it and she screams, screams, for her child is dead. Her child, dead, her beautiful child that was born but a week ago, dead, blue and dead and cold and unmoving, dead.

Yassamin opens her eyes and collapses on the floor, howling in pain. Jaffar tries to catch her, but she pushes him away, punches his chest, screaming in rage between sobs.

"Why would you show me something like that?" she screams, screams until her throat is hoarse. _"Why?"_

He hugs her from behind, holding her tight in his arms, rocking her despite her kicks and her blows. "I am so sorry." His words are rapid, chopped, cut into pieces by his stuttering breath. "Know that it wasn't an image of my own making--I--oh, God--" He presses his face into her shoulder, rocks her, rocks her and himself, trying in vain to soothe them both. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry; had I known, I--" 

His tears soak her neck, her shoulder, and she realises he is weeping harder than she is. She did not recognise the image, but he must have, he must have, and it can only mean one thing--

"Tell me, Jaffar," she demands, digging her nails into his arms, unable to stop crying. "You must tell me. I deserve to know. Not later, _now._ "

He doesn't answer her in words, but clasps her against himself and suffocates a howl into her neck, as if his heart was being torn out of his chest. And she cannot bear it. She turns, turns and takes him in her arms, pulls him down onto the cushions beside herself and holds him tight. And in her arms he weeps, weeps for the woman and her lost child, the woman he knows but she doesn't. It is the strangest thing: she, but a pale woman, holding the tallest of men now curled in a fetal ball in her arms, as if in a mockery of her vision. She nuzzles Jaffar's robe to wipe her tears, swallowing, determined to understand. 

But she cannot do it alone. 

"Share my bed tonight, Jaffar," she whispers. "Just to sleep." 

He laughs through his tears, shaking his head. "You would trust me to do that?" He means to be flippant, but there is a gentleness, a delight in his voice.

"Yes," she answers, unhesitant, pulling back to smooth out his kohl with her thumbs. "And you must tell me everything."

"There's a perfectly good bed here." He leers, but there is no danger in it, no true lust underneath his sorrow, his fatigue. "I prepared it for you once; it's only fair we should use it now."

"All right, then." She kisses his forehead, pointedly chaste, but with genuine affection. "Let me get my things."


	6. Chapter 6

And there, upon Jaffar's bed, her hand clasped in his, she listens to his tale. Of how his grandfather, Khalid, and his father, Yahya, had built Baghdad from dust and clay to encircle the river, how Jaffar and his brothers had raised her to her now-famous glory. How he and his family had been the Caliphate's eyes and ears, its true wisdom; how they had helped Harun onto the throne. Harun, "The Rightly Guided," had he made his regnal name, and the Barmakids had been his guidance. 

Until they had grown too powerful, until their gold-tiled palaces had been more magnificent than the Caliph's, until their armies--including Jaffar's own--had rivalled Harun's. Even this, Harun could take, grudgingly: he would simply move into Jaffar's palace with his family and order Jaffar's troops to be stationed far outside the city gates. And Jaffar had acquiesced, for Harun and he had become great friends. They were of the same age, had fought in the same battles, and liked each other's company. 

"He would trust me with the upbringing of his sons, even," Jaffar says, his eyes glinting in the lamplight. "Like any king, he would have his fits, his tantrums, and sometimes he even threatened to murder me. But nothing ever came of it. He still loved me, still trusted me, and always looked to me for guidance. There was but one person, but one he loved more than me."

And there, he pauses, to stroke her cheek with the backs of his fingers. "What is your name?"

"You know my name."

His voice is fragile, pleading. "I want to hear you say it. Tell me who you are."

And for the first time in her life, she struggles to say her own name: she no longer knows who she is, and is not sure if her name fits her as easily. It is the name of the maiden in the garden, of a flower among many.

"Yassamin. I am Yassamin, daughter of Mahmoud." But she is no longer a mere blossom in her father's garden, no. "What was hers?"

Jaffar's lips twitch, as if he has forbidden himself her name, its utterance, and it's with great effort he forces his lips and tongue to form the syllables. 

"Abbasa."

The name stirs an echo in her mind, but nothing more: a name she could have remembered from a chronicle, from her mother's tales. And that's as it should be, she thinks, should it not? She is frightened of what she will find, frightened of seeking knowledge forbidden to mortals, lest she go mad like so many have in their will to know. Yet, she must know, or she will never rest. She takes Jaffar's hand.

"Who was she?"

He rubs the back of her hand with his thumb, lost in thought. "She was many things. The daughter of a king, the sister of a king--of Harun himself. His sisters were the wildest and wisest women you ever saw: one of them rode to battle as a man, a heavy sword by her side, and no man was her match. Another was the greatest poetess Baghdad had ever seen or heard. As you listened to her, it was as if you were in love for the first time, had your heart broken for the first time, and the birds themselves grew quiet upon their branches and wept."

"And Abbasa herself?"

"She was the brightest of them all, a woman scholar, a lady of letters. To be entirely honest with you, she _frightened_ me at first. No woman had ever outwitted me, had ever given wiser counsel than me. She had the most merciless eyes I'd ever seen, full of intelligence and wit, ready to strike down everyone in her path. When she looked into my eyes, I would find myself shrinking, cowering, would find myself very small."

She cannot help but laugh. " _You?_ Frightened, small?"

He nods, grudgingly. "There was nothing I dreaded more than her laughter. I would spend my days absorbing compilations of witticisms so I could deflect the arrows of her quips. I would try and get my hands on the latest scientific treatises from all corners of the world, only to find them in her library. I would seduce the prettiest of cupbearers, the feistiest of tomboys only to have them confess their hearts belonged to her instead."

And there, she feels a flash of pride, smiling even if she knows the story does not end well. "Please, continue."

"I did not love her at first. But Harun... he did, so much that I feared that in those hours when his madness took over, he dreamt of taking his sister to his bed. And I wondered if that was why he kept me by his right hand while Abbasa sat at his left: so my presence would act as some kind of buffer, so that I would stop him from laying a hand on her. But it was just a suspicion, nothing more: after all, the three of us were good friends, the best of friends. So I sat by his side, diplomatic, quiet. But after a while, the rumours started. Yet they were not rumours of incest: they were rumours of Abbasa and myself, slurs on her reputation. A princess, associating so freely with a man not her kin? It was highly inappropriate, they whispered and would fling shameful epithets at her, torturing her with gossip night and day. She would come to Harun in tears--she, the woman they called a lioness!--and would weep pitifully at his feet."

"What happened?"

"Harun decided we should marry. I blanched at first and so did she, but he reassured us it was to be a marriage of convenience. I remember that night well. He was in his cups, his eyes glowing with mad jealousy, warning us that if we ever consummated the marriage, he would have both our heads. And by saying that, he had already sealed our fates. You know how it always is--it is the forbidden fruit that tastes the sweetest. Where there had been rivalry between us before, there was now a fresh, new current of desire. Nothing makes lust quite so sweet as the threat of annihilation, I fear: to know that you are defying death itself with the force of love. To feel that you are racing from death, to catch love before death catches you. Perhaps because with love comes the draw to copulate, to create new life in the face of inevitable death--perhaps Nature has instilled this in us; perhaps it is her way." 

"And so, behind Harun's back, our glances grew hungrier, our touches lingered a little longer than they should have. Every time we met in Harun's presence, we presented new temptations to each other, offered ourselves to each other, saw what we could get away with. She would wear tighter jackets, perfume her braids and arrange them sweetly around the softness of her breasts. I would become vain and rim my eyes with so much kohl, wrap myself in so much silk you could have mistaken me for a woman. And thus we continued our deadly game, every word between us hanging thick with lust, every touch between us a shower of sparks. Unconsummated, unfulfilled, apart."

"Until one evening, when I had already retired for the night and had told my servants to put out the candles, a slave girl climbed into my bed. I had not asked for one, I said, having lost my desire for others. But she hushed me--a slave girl, and she dared hush me!--and climbed on top of me, grinding herself against me in the dark until I stirred, until she could guide me inside herself. It was then that she lifted her veil and spoke in the sarcastic, husky voice I knew so well: "Once more have I outwitted you, son of Yahya." Abbasa smiled, smiled and claimed my mouth with a kiss."

He, too, smiles, but his smile soon fades. "The rest, you know from your history books. Harun found out, and a fever took over his brain, plunging him into his final madness. He would not rest until my entire family lay dead at his feet, but soon, the fever claimed him. There was too much blood on his hands. I like to imagine it was my family that personally dragged him to Hell, and will gather to accuse him once more on Judgement Day."

"So, there, you have the sorry tale of Jaffar, son of Yahya." He lets go of her hand, turns onto his back and stares upwards, stares at the sputtering lamp hanging above their bed. 

"How did you escape?" 

"I told you about my daughter. She would always carry apples in her jacket, and as I heard Harun's guards approaching, I armed her with a poisoned one. The poison was an arsenic compound, leading to a slow death: one that could easily be mistaken for a fever, so she would not be implicated. I slipped it into her jacket, telling her to save herself, to offer it to anyone who would threaten her. Harun found it as he tore her jacket off and bit into it with relish, before he--" 

Jaffar grits his teeth, squeezes his eyes shut, tears sliding slowly down his temples. He is trying to hold back a sob, but it steals out through his teeth and crushes him to the bed. He covers his face with his hands and weeps, weeps from the full depth of his sorrow. It's as if for the last quarter of a century, he has held in the pain, kept it walled inside of himself and now those walls are crumbling, crashing down with violent force. It is a terrible thing to behold, to listen to, and she tries to comfort him with a hand on his shoulder. He jerks away from her touch as if it burnt, never taking his hands from his face even as his tears suffocate him, his breathing but wet, nasal sobs.

It seems as if her limbs lift out of their own volition, as if what she now does is out of a dream remembered: she is not Abbasa, yet she now finds herself straddling Jaffar's lap, lifting his hands from his face. "Jaffar."

 _Don't mock me,_ his face is saying, but before he can open his mouth, she pins his wrists to the pillows and kisses him.

It is a soft kiss, like a first kiss should be: full of gentleness, affection, hope.

He keens into her mouth as if bitten, sinks his hands into her hair and keens once more. He takes her mouth like a man condemned: as if it was his last respite, a last blessing before dying. And it's then that she regrets her impulse. She knows he wishes, hopes that what he has now seen is a love reborn. And for his sake, she wishes she _was_ Abbasa come back from the dead, but she cannot, cannot know for certain. And should she? Even if she had lived before, would there not be a reason for her to have forgotten? God, in his mercy, would have made her forget, to spare her from the pain. The pain Jaffar has now exhumed from its tomb, the pain she had not been meant to remember. Is it right that they dwell on it so, pull out into the daylight that which should have been left behind?

"Jaffar." She wipes his tears, combs his hair with her fingers until his breathing evens under her caresses, under the weight of her body. 

"Yes?" He holds her face in his hands, as if seeing it for the first time.

"Even if--even if there was a way back--"

"What are you trying to say?"

Her chest aches, her heart lurching, sinking. "If God willed for someone to return to this world, would he not do so to make the soul grow? To learn from its past?"

Jaffar nods, quietly, tucking her hair behind her ear. "My ancestors followed the teachings of the Buddha. They might have called reincarnation a curse, a punishment for the mistakes the soul had committed in a past life." He squeezes his eyes shut, barely able to speak for his sobs, fresh tears rolling into her palms in his hair. "And I--I was your mistake. Had I--had I known I would damn you--"

She shakes her head, whispers quietly. "I don't feel damned, Jaffar."

"What do you feel?"

"I don't know." And how could she? Their very lives are but reflections in God's mirror, flickering there for a moment, then gone. She knows the world itself is made of but shapes that coalesce and then dissolve once more, but only God is eternal. Not Jaffar, not Yassamin, not Abbasa. And that's how it should be, for how could you have gratitude for life itself if you lived forever? Would there be any reason to love, to have children, to enjoy the present if you knew you were eternal? Would that not inspire lethargy, vanity, false pride? Whatever she may have been, she does not remember, and is not sure if she wants to. All she can be sure of is what she is now, tonight, in this cabin: but an anxious, confused young woman in Jaffar's arms. 

"I don't know what I feel, Jaffar. But I do know I am not Abbasa. Even if I was, indeed, her once, I am not her any longer."

He nods, sighing. "You are right. And that is the most awful thing of all. I cannot turn back time, cannot undo what I did, cannot come looking for you." His voice quivers with pain. "To rescue you, to rescue our child, to rescue my daughter and all who died with her." He caresses her cheeks, her shoulders, running his eyes up and down her face as if looking for birthmarks, similarities between her and his lost love.

But he finds none, and lets his hands fall onto the bed. His voice is heavy with defeat. "Even if you had been her in a past life, that would not mean anything in this one. Maybe we were meant to love each other a quarter of a century ago; maybe you were meant to hate me in this one."

"I cannot believe that. God would not bring a child into this world just as an instrument, just to punish Jaffar, son of Yahya. That's the voice of self-pity you hear, and it is the most selfish voice of all. It tricks you into believing everything in this world happens because of you. It's a false, pompous belief." She manages a weak smile. "Even for a king."

He searches her eyes for a long while, considers her, the woman in his arms. When he finally speaks, his voice is small, fragile. "And what are we now? Friends, lovers, enemies?"

Fresh tears fall on his cheeks; hers. "I don't know."


	7. Chapter 7

Thus they go on: married yet unconsummated, unfulfilled, apart.

Now it is he who withdraws into his quarters; he who spends his nights alone, driving servants out, keeping company only with his books and his silence. He delegates his duties to viziers, forbidding anyone from entering his quarters, including Yassamin. It is as if he is scared of the human face, preferring the company of his clockwork toys, spending his nights tinkering with them. The few servants that are allowed near him, leaving trays of food and drink outside his door, whisper of madness. He is building himself a court of fantastical animals, they say: beasts of black and twisted metal with no beauty to them, with missing eyes and limbs, slouching and crawling across his floors like nightmares. Every night, he builds himself a new creature, they say, and every night he takes a mallet to it, breaking it to pieces, weeping amidst its ruins.

Yassamin is in Basra when these tales reach her. She is there to tend to her dying mother, reading holy scripture beside her bed to ease her passing. But the servants' whispers slip through the verses, make her lose her page and stutter, the words of angels becoming a jumble in her mouth.

Her mother's hand is small, so small and frail as it clasps hers. "Tell me." Her eyes are still sharp, even with the veil of fever over them. When Zuleikha is gone, she will be remembered as the queen to whom nothing was secret: a queen known for her intelligence, her piety, her wisdom. Yassamin has always looked up to her mother, has hoped she could one day be like her, but she seems to be failing at the task. If she but had her mother's strength, her calm--

Zuleikha has so little time left, just when her daughter needs her wisdom the most. So Yassamin breaks down and tells her mother of herself and Jaffar, her words tumbling out of her mouth in torrents until she has told her everything. She kisses Zuleikha's hand, with tears in her eyes. "I do not know my destiny any longer, mother. Every time I think I am doing as God intended, my entire world is turned upside down. I don't even know who I am."

"Hush. You are my daughter." 

"Then what is my destiny?"

Zuleikha laughs. "I'll make sure to take God by his shirt and shake him until he tells you. Just give me a few days."

"Mother, don't blaspheme!"

Zuleikha pats her hand. "God and I are old friends; old enough to joke about each other. But enough of him; I will see him soon enough. And I would see a smile upon my daughter's face before I leave."

Yassamin casts her eyes down in shame. "I am sorry, mother." 

"Your husband loves you, does he not? Has he not offered to make you happy?"

"That is what pains me. I don't know if he loves me, or if he loves another, the woman he lost."

"And if it was, indeed, _you_ he loved, my child? Could you then love him back?"

"Perhaps." And it is as if something in her heart cracks open, breaks: for the idea of loving Jaffar is a thousand times more painful than the idea of hating him, or merely tolerating him. Especially now, now that she knows his own heart is split in twain. She knows she does not want to be loved as an echo, a memory, a substitute; she wants to be loved for herself. Even if one half of Jaffar's heart genuinely loved her, what about the other? Could she bear it, the shadow of Abbasa, someone greater than her, always hovering over her? If he kissed Yassamin, made love to her, would he always be comparing them, contrasting them; would he find her wanting? These and other fears she now pours at her mother's feet. 

She listens, patiently, like she has always listened, considering Yassamin for a long while before she speaks.

"Perhaps it is you he waits for. Go to him. Talk to him. Do not let him become like your father, a mad old fool who only talks to his toys."

She kisses her mother's hand. "I shall try."

***

After her mother is gone, she retreats to her father's garden for her grieving. It's there she can sit in peace with her thoughts, her memories, her dreams. There, she spends long days remembering her mother, remembering the days of her childhood with a painful longing. This is the garden of her girlhood, of her innocence, and the day men had breached its gates--Ahmad with his curiosity, Jaffar with his spells--her world had started to fall apart and she had never been able to put it back together again. With the fervour of a madwoman, she yearns to turn back time, return to that unviolated, unpierced state. Maybe this is, indeed, why she has clung to her physical virginity for so long, she thinks with a mirthless laugh. For has the love of men brought nothing but chaos into her life? 

She lies down to sleep on the grass and there are no hands, no crows, just her mother's voice, as gentle as the breeze upon the pond.

_"Do not grieve for that which you cannot change, my child. Keep your mind to what you can change in the present."_

"What _can_ I change?"

_"That is indeed the question you should always be asking yourself. If you never ask, you will never find out."_

***

The next day, Yassamin leaves for Baghdad. When she arrives, she is again told Jaffar refuses to accept visitors. It is not safe for her, at any rate, they tell her: he has taken to drinking like a Christian, not even disguising his inebriation like any civilised person would. So the guards bar her from his door, afraid of his wrath.

She straightens to her full height and tells them she is not a visitor. She is his queen. 

At that, the guards can barely stifle their laughter.

"Is that so? He has not yet wed you." 

"If you are his queen, why have we not seen you share his throne yet?"

But at her glare, they cower, just slightly, realising Jaffar's wrath might be upon them whether they bar her or not. So they shift their feet, nervous, and that's when she decides for them. 

"Any man who so much as lays a finger on me will lose his head. Let me pass."

Without waiting for an answer, she pushes past the guards and enters Jaffar's quarters. She is not surprised to discover they are in a mess: pieces of paper and clockwork machinery lie scattered about on the floor, the low tables, the bed. Dust billows out of the carpets as she makes her way across the room to the bed upon which Jaffar sits, staring into his cup, ignoring her. He's discarded his turban long ago, his hair hanging down to his stubbled cheeks, his skin and robes covered in dark patches of oil. 

"Jaffar."

When he does not answer, she sits beside him and takes his hand.

He still refuses to look at her. "What do you want?" he growls, his voice rough from wine, from disuse.

"Don't you think both of us have grieved long enough?" She does not mean to be harsh, but realises her weariness now makes her sound blunt, accusing, even before Jaffar lifts his face to glare at her.

"Quite." He busies himself preparing another cup of wine, then offers it to her. She hesitates, but he takes her hands and presses the cup into them. "Please." 

The genuine, weary sadness in his voice make her relent. So she takes his cup, not to intoxicate herself but to take part in the ritual of companionship, of sharing. They pass the cup back and forth many times before he finally speaks, slurring, still avoiding her eyes.

"What do you think of me?" 

She stares at her slippers and laughs nervously. "You couldn't have asked a more difficult question."

"Say something, at least. Because I'm sick--" he sighs deep in his chest. "I am sick of not knowing. Sick of this limbo," he whispers, then glances sideways at her. "Go on. Tell me you hate me. Just don't keep me here like this. _Waiting._ "

"Jaffar, I--"

"And don't tell me you _don't know,_ " he spits, kneeling before her, swaying from wine and exhaustion. "'When will you wed her?' they ask me. We signed the contract a year ago, but it means nothing to our subjects, nothing until we sit underneath the bridal canopy as king and queen. I have had the mightiest men in the land offering their daughters to me in marriage, and do you know what I have done? I have turned them down. All of them. Because I have been waiting for _you._ "

"And I suppose you have also been turning down the slave girls' advances," she spits right back, despite herself. 

She had come here to reach out to him, to tell him she cared for him, that she might even have begun to love him--but something still twists inside her, the remnants of her old hatred making cruel words spill from her mouth like poison. When he hisses and turns his face away, she wonders if she is not possessed, if there isn't some contrary demon in her that wants to burn all the chances she has ever had at happiness. Again, her shock is so deep it is as if she sees herself from afar: a pale, fragile woman now touching Jaffar's shoulder. "I'm sorry."

Jaffar glances at her hand, but does not push it away. "As a matter of fact, I _have_ turned them down." He stares at her, his eyes expanding with cold fire, so wide and accusing it's hard to look at.

"I'm sorry. It wouldn't matter." And despite her outburst, she speaks the truth. The ferocity of the love he has for her frightens her, to the point where thoughts of other wives or concubines seem almost a relief. Anything to dissipate the desire in his eyes, so she won't have to suffer the full, tearing, animal force of it. She has had nightmares of what would happen if she lay with him: of caresses so intense they would break her, snap her in half like a doll. 

Perhaps this is why a part of her still rejects him, she realises, the part in her that fears being devoured, ripped apart, transformed. The virgin girl in her father's garden, refusing to grow up, refusing to become someone else. She thinks of Jaffar in his trances; of the power, the sensual force that runs through him when he works his magic. She knows _love_ to be but one name for the life force, the power of all that grows, lives, dies; the power of transformation. And she knows that once she accepts him, once she accepts his love, she will accept change. Thus, she teeters upon the brink, afraid to let go, afraid to fall.

"It's just that I needed time, and still need time, Jaffar." 

"No more waiting." He shakes his head and reaches out to cup her face in his hands. "Either I wed you or divorce you. You have until tomorrow."

" _No!_ "

"Yes."

"Then answer me this, Jaffar." She clasps her hands over his, swallowing down tears. "Who is it that you love; who is it that you wish to wed? Abbasa or Yassamin?"

He frowns in incomprehension. "I wish to wed _you._ "

But that is no answer at all. She extricates herself and he doesn't resist, doesn't say a word as she gets up to leave, hesitating at the door. 

He sits upon his bed, quiet, with his head in his hands.


	8. Chapter 8

She wants to answer "Yes." But as she rehearses her answer in front of the mirror that night, she finds she cannot force her lips to form the word. She wants to push herself off the brink, to plunge herself into the unknown, into womanhood, motherhood, beyond. She wants his caresses, _wants_ him to tear her apart and reshape her into the queen she was born to be: yet the words dry upon her tongue. She tosses and turns for hours before she finally falls asleep.

***

She lies upon the green grass of her father's garden, and the crow unfurls its wings: it billows out, paints itself into Jaffar lying beside her in his black silks, his eyes full of sorrow. 

"I waited for you," he whispers, tracing her cheek with his fingertips, soft as feathers. "And what a fool was I, ever to have thought I could own you." He clasps her hand in his, then lets go. "Be free of me, Abbasa; be free of me, Yassamin, and pray to God for my soul." 

His silks, feathers flutter in the wind, dissolve into black smoke and he is gone.

***

No. _No._ Her eyes snap open in the dark, her hands coming to clutch at the sheets. _You will not be free of me,_ she thinks. _Not now, not after all this time._

She knows where to find him. She picks up a lantern and makes her way to the pleasure palace, clutching her night-robes to her chest. 

When she was a little girl, she and the other princesses were given the task of lighting the lamps in her father's pleasure palaces, just like this one: one by one, she gives light from her lantern to the ones lining the corridors, lighting her way into the depths of the house. Light by light, she makes her way in the dark to the room at the very back of the palace. As she lights the last lantern, she has her back to the room, her hands shaking, her breath rapid, her pulse thundering in her ears because she is afraid of what she will find. But she cannot, must not delay any longer.

In the centre of the room, at the foot of the blue rose, lies Jaffar. He lies unconscious, pale, dragged to the floor by the hands of its suffocating perfume. 

She tiptoes closer, kneels beside him, sets her lantern beside his head. He is terrible to behold: he lies on his side, his eyes empty and staring, his limbs heavy and unmoving. Old tears dry on his cheeks, stain the sides of the turban now unravelling from his head. He has shaved, washed, she realises; he is dressed all in white. In white, in gold, like a groom come to meet his bride.

 _I waited too long,_ she thinks, suffocating a gasp into her hand, _I hesitated,_ and he had chosen Lethe's kisses instead of hers, instead of Abbasa's. Because she had hesitated. For Jaffar, only forgetfulness had offered its lips, its embrace, the shadow of the rose its bridal canopy. 

"I would have said yes," she mumbles, her fingertips hovering over his cheek, "I would have said yes, had I had more time, I would have said yes, and I am so sorry--" her tears fall on her hand, on his unmoving face, roll down over his mouth and his nose. "I am so sorry, so sorry, Jaffar--"

He blinks, breathes out a shuddering sigh. She clasps his face in her hands, but he does not recognise her, frowning as he runs his gaze up and down her face. "Who are you?" he asks; a stab into her heart.

"Do you truly not remember me? Yourself?"

Slowly, he sits up, looking at the floor, at his robes, at his hands, as if seeing them for the first time. "It seems as if I have been dreaming."

She presses her hand to his chest, over his heart, unable to speak. He looks at it, then clasps his hand over hers. "My lady, why are you weeping so?" he asks, his voice full of such tenderness, such softness, such incomprehension. It is a gentle Jaffar that now holds her hand to his chest, a gentle heart that beats underneath her touch. To her shame, she thinks _is this not more merciful?_ For gone is the pain of his loss, just like he had wanted, gone is the paranoia of the tyrant. His eyes no longer gleam like those of some wild beast's, lust no longer ripples from him and around him like summer's heat. The Jaffar she knows has been erased, wiped out, leaving behind but his physical shell.

And she cannot bear it. She looks at the rose, thinks of pressing her face to its petals and inhaling deep, so that Yassamin would forget as Jaffar has forgotten. 

But Yassamin _had_ forgotten, once, for a brief while, yet had come back upon hearing the voice of her true love. The one who she had only thought was her true love, to be sure, but it had been the voice of love nevertheless. Maybe there is, then, hope for Jaffar still--but is she not speaking to him now, touching him, even? Maybe she was right: it was not Yassamin he loved, but Abbasa. Maybe it's only Abbasa's voice that could have broken the spell, and Abbasa is no more. 

In that moment, she is so full of grief, so full of despair she reaches for the rose. She cradles the petals in her palm, their softness now welcoming her, whispering the end of all sorrow. But Jaffar, thinking her but an ordinary woman contemplating an ordinary rose, lifts her chin with his hand.

"What is your name?"

A heartbeat, two.

"Yassamin of Basra, daughter of Mahmoud of Basra."

His expression flickers, a little. "Why are you here?" He frowns, as if he has only just realised everything is not as it should be. He has woken up on the floor of a strange palace, with a strange woman beside him and something in him stirs, eager to find out. An intelligence as keen as his is not easily dulled, even by magic. Here, she spies her chance to light the forgotten lanterns in his mind, to slip light-beams of memory through the darkness of forgetfulness.

"My lord, I have come here to look for my husband." She strokes his cheek.

"What is his name?" At her touch, the blue of his eyes stirs, ripples like water. 

"Jaffar, son of Yahya of the Barmakids." She swallows a tear, another. "The Caliph of Baghdad, Defender of the Faithful." And before she can stop herself, she has pressed a kiss to his mouth, the softest brush of her lips against his.

He pulls back and frowns. "That should be _Commander_ of the Faithful, not _Defender_. Or did you mean _Defender of the Faith_ instead? I--" He stills in sudden shock, his hands falling to his sides. "I--"

And now he must remember, he must, yet her heart still lurches as she asks: "Do you remember who I am?" And she fears, fears that memory will be the memory of rejection, that the pain will shatter him into a thousand pieces, his mind so fragile now, in a state so close to madness. 

Yes, madness, madness in his now-trembling limbs, in the storm now gathering in his eyes.

"You were my wife," he says, and it is the blood-wet sigh of a man stabbed, "And you--"

She silences him with a finger to his lips. "And I will be your wife once more. If you will have me, Jaffar son of Yahya."

He pauses, swaying, taking her hand from his lips and clasping it. "If I will have you?" he mouths the words, as if tasting them. 

And then he is tasting her instead, his mouth on her mouth, tender, slow, a soft cry passing from his mouth into hers. He pulls back to look at her, just for a moment, as if he was still not sure whether he was dreaming. His hands tremble around her as if he still wasn't sure he was allowed to touch her, if she wouldn't turn into smoke if he tried to embrace her. Something in his eyes flickers, then, and with sudden, violent force, he crushes her against his chest. She can't breathe, but she doesn't want to; what little breaths she has left she sinks into his shoulder. It is curious: he holds onto her like a man drowning, yet it is as if it's she he wants to drown in. His hands grab, claw and pat at her back, warm, restless as he rocks her in his arms.

She holds him, hugs him back, but that isn't enough, no: she needs to be closer. So she climbs into his lap, wraps her legs around him, presses her body against his and sighs. "Jaffar. I am so sorry."

"No." He gazes at her, stroking her hair. "No more apologies." Another deep, slow kiss, another soft sigh into her mouth, that of a man pardoned, given life. "No more grieving."

No more grieving for the past; only the shaping of the present moment, _change._ And with each and every kiss, caress, she comes to realise her own power, her own magic, her witchcraft: how his muscles follow the touches of her hands with soft tremors, how his pulse is quickened by her lips upon his neck, how her smiling makes a slow smile spread onto his lips in turn. How her breath nourishes his when she returns it to his mouth, having stolen it from him with sweet, teasing kisses. 

And yet, it is far from enough. She laces her fingers with his and pushes him down, down onto the floor, Jaffar whimpering into her mouth as she grinds herself against him. His eyes widen in shock, his entire body trembling as he pulls his mouth off hers with a smack. With a wordless cry, he arches underneath her, his hips thrusting between her legs, his erection hard against her mound. He lies there, panting, flushed, groaning in shame. "Oh, God."

"Did I hurt you?" She shifts her position and then she feels it: wetness soaking through his shalwars, hers. "Oh. _Oh._ " She covers her mouth with her hand but is unable to stifle her laughter; not that of mockery, but of delight, delight mixed with a dash of pride. With but half a dozen grinds of her hips, she has just--

He looks up at her, squirming in embarrassment. "Congratulations, my lady. You have turned a man of forty-seven into a boy of fourteen."

She can't help but tilt her head playfully. "Is that such a bad thing?"

"Well, in my darkest days I wondered if I should not let myself die and be reborn so you would notice me." He hasn't let go of her hand, and presses it to his lips. "It would have taken some time for me to find you again, to become of age, but imagine it: you would've had a lad of fifteen, sixteen in your bed. And you would have been the richest, most desirable widow in the land, still beautiful."

She leans down to kiss him, smiling against his mouth. She can see where this vision is leading. "Are you trying to tell me something, Jaffar?" 

"Perhaps. I may have fantasised a little," he leers, with a lazy roll of his hips. 

"The older me would have had to educate the young Jaffar, of course," she says with an exaggerated nod. "He, the quivering virgin," she laughs, "would have been so grateful for the guidance of my more experienced hands." She purrs, straddling his thigh, rubbing herself against it with a shamelessness that should shock her. Yet, she cannot stop, as if there is too much lust in her to hold back any longer and damn shame, damn this virginity she has held onto for far too long. So she takes his hands and guides them to the curves of her hips, leaning over him and whispering into his mouth. "Tell me more." 

He chuckles, pushing his thigh up, flexing its muscles, hard against her, her own wetness now soaking through their silks. "Oh, she would have guided me with her hands indeed." His eyes flash in arousal, in astonishment that she should not only accept this fantasy but enjoy it, demand more. The look in his eyes is that of recognition, the delight of an accomplice found, a connection forged. Yet with this connection comes a new vulnerability, the vulnerability of the boy in his fantasy, an innocent Jaffar now newly born before her eyes. So he stutters a little before he continues. 

"I would have lain there unmoving, frozen in terror as she took me in her hand. Maybe--maybe she would've gifted me with a kiss." He reaches up and tastes her mouth, taking each of her lips between his in turn: the shy, tentative kiss of a boy. 

It is so real, so sweet she trembles all over, clutching his thigh with hers. "Please, continue."

He cups her breasts in his hands, leaning back with a wistful sigh. "The end would have come soon, just as it did now. She would have held me against the softness of her body, within the softness of her hand until I was sated, spent. And the gratitude with which I would have kissed her, undulating into her wet palm--oh." He smiles, slides his hands down to her waist, looking up at her, adoring. "I would have called her 'mistress,' and loved her until the end of my days."

Her heart gallops in her chest as she listens to him, as she rides him, her folds sliding open as she moves on his thigh. She leans down over him with a smile. "And what about now?" she breathes, rapidly. "What about this Jaffar that now lies underneath me?"

He laughs, his eyes dancing with happiness. "Oh, he will call you 'mistress' all right." He closes his eyes and when he opens them again, his lashes are glittering with tears. "And he will love you until the end of his days," he says as he brushes her lips with his. "Perhaps even beyond," he whispers, devastated with joy, taking her mouth with the gratitude, the passion of a lover who has conquered death. 

She keens into his mouth, feverish. "Will you teach me?" Her voice is brittle from want, her need frantic as she pulls his hands to her hips once more. She wants to learn; she wants to--oh, she can't not tell him, the need in her is too great. "Teach me. Everything."

"Oh, I will." He claws at her buttocks, smacks them, paws at them. "I'm going to do so many things to you, my child," he hisses through his teeth, filthy, slick. "So many things." He grinds his thigh into her, then slips one of his hands between her buttocks, to her anus, making her cry out into his mouth in shock. She struggles a little, but he traps her with one of his arms around her, clutching her tight against his body as he rubs and rubs, fingers pressing mercilessly against her arse. "Do you like that?" he purrs as she squirms, shocks of pleasure shooting through her body. 

"I don't know, I--" she quivers all over, unable to stop, grinding hard into the twin pressures of his thigh and his hand, terrified at how good it feels, terrified--

"Well," he grins, his laughter rumbling in his chest, his lips wet against her ear. "Just wait until I do this with my _cock._ "

And it's then that she _screams,_ screams against his cheek in terror, the noise triggering a cascade of ecstasy inside her. Her body shudders, jerks of its own volition, his hand and his thigh and his laughter forcing pulses of more and more pleasure through her body, until she is nothing but shivering flesh on top of him, her senses scattered to the four winds. She sobs into his shoulder as he continues to rub at her, taking in her sweet convulsions, drinking in every drop. 

"Good girl," he croons. "That was your first lesson." 

Still shaking, she swats at his hands, groaning in helpless frustration against his neck. "You are cruel."

He sighs in smug contentment, stroking her hair with both hands as he lifts her up for a kiss. "When shall we wed?" 


	9. Chapter 9

It takes a while even for a king to make wedding arrangements--or, rather, exactly because one is a king. The court expects a lavish feast, especially from a Barmakid, the name of Jaffar's family already a byword for great hospitality. And Jaffar, now the last to carry that name, is determined to make the legend an enduring one. So with the coming of spring, the palace is decked with garlands, suffused with incense, made clean and shining for the hundreds of guests who have arrived for the celebrations. All throughout the city, alms are distributed, beggars fed, prisoners pardoned. The entire palace is repainted with blues and pinks until it resembles a flower itself, blossoming for the world to see.

Like all brides, she is nervous, her handmaidens constantly having to tell her to stop biting her fingernails, to stop pacing. Part of her restlessness comes from separation: even if Jaffar hadn't made a point of not sharing her bed until the wedding, he still wouldn't have had time to see her for all the guests who would never have arrived in Baghdad otherwise. Emirs, viziers, ambassadors have travelled far and wide to offer their blessings, and more importantly, to discuss politics. It is one of the few occasions upon which even the religious scholars agree to--grudgingly--sit at the same table with one another. Thus, Jaffar works his statecraft night and day, only managing to visit her for brief moments for a glass of tea and a quick embrace.

He sighs into her hair. "Tomorrow, you will be my queen. Then I'll drive those blasted sheep out, delegate all this arguing to the viziers and just rest in your arms for an entire fortnight."

She kisses his cheek. "I like the sound of that. As long as it isn't all rest," she smirks.

"Oh, it won't be, trust me. I just need to be rid of the sycophants and the troublemakers. I'm tired of being called either the light of the world and the banner of the faith or a wine-drenched, heathen sodomite."

"You must introduce me to the wine-drenched, heathen sodomite. As long as _I_ get to play the pageboy, of course," she adds, wiggling her buttocks.

"Oh, I will tell you all about Jaffar the rake," he sighs dramatically. "You know, until this day, I thought all my indulgences were just attempts to dull the pain of what I had lost. Now I see they were just preparing me for your return," he says, only half-joking, nuzzling her face. His eyes flash with a sudden lust and he pulls her closer, kissing her with impatient ferocity. He sucks on her tongue, the pleasure of it so violent she lifts onto her toes, blood rushing between her legs until she aches, wanting nothing more than to rip his clothes off and have her way with him right now. As she whimpers into his mouth, he pulls back, considering her with a leer. "Now, then. What are the most sinful, most delicious pleasures you can think of, my sweet? Think of those and double them, and that is what I promise to give you." 

She leans into his body, his perfume of sandalwood and musk, her breath catching as the most colourful, most saturated images flood her mind. The crude drawings she had seen in medical textbooks, all the love manuals her mother had given her in preparation for womanhood--all the sins she'd heard whispers of that weren't even spoken of in books. The strange superstitions the Christians held of the Persian ways, the astonished questions of the Byzantine princess she had talked to earlier that day. The Byzantine girl had imagined polygamy to mean orgies, of lords taking all their wives and concubines to bed at once. "But that would be grounds for divorce!" Yassamin had exclaimed back, astonished at the Christian's perversion.

Yet she would not be surprised if Jaffar had broken that taboo, too, and more. She thinks of a pornographic miniature she once saw, of a prince embraced by lovers of both sexes: he sinking inside the woman as his male lover penetrated him from behind. From Amila, she knows Jaffar enjoys even the pleasures of the mouth, considered by scholars far more disgusting than even anal penetration. He thinks of Jaffar and slave girls, slave boys, partaking of wine, hashish, opium, all the forbidden substances so favoured by courtiers. 

And even in her curiosity, in her arousal she knows no rake to have ever been truly happy: it is desperation, it is melancholy that makes a libertine, the depth of his depravity directly proportionate to the vast grief in his heart. And for a moment she wonders if it should not be tenderness, simple lovemaking that would be the greatest taboo for Jaffar, son of Yahya. So she tells him, tells him of the sins she knows of, of the sins she has heard of him commit, and asks if it is not so. 

He kisses her hand. "For so long, I tried to kill the pain. I wanted to take, wanted to ravage, wanted to wallow. But the moment I saw you, that Jaffar stepped back. It is true you are my greatest perversion, my love, because you have revealed what has been truly hidden in me. Other men repress their secret desires for wine, boys, for the lash: I repressed love. I thought it would be of no further use for me, you see. Your rejection was proof of it: that love would only wound me, and that Jaffar the lover needed to die for Jaffar the king to rule. In my heart of hearts, I still believed it the day you found me at the foot of the rose."

"And now that Jaffar the lover lives once more, will he take me to his bed tomorrow?"

"He will take you to his bed tomorrow." He kisses her forehead. "I cannot, however, guarantee Jaffar the rake's ghost won't follow," he grins. "It would be a shame to let all that learning go to waste."

And she knows what he means by it, swallowing thickly at the possibilities. All of his perversion, now harnessed by love, reserved just for her. She shivers at the memory of his fingers pressing into her arse, greedy for entrance, the dirty sounds in his throat as he had come undone between her legs, and she wants more; wants to see his face when he is inside her. She wants to learn what he likes, she wants to learn what _she_ likes; which perversions of his she shares. The forbidden pleasures, now tempered by tenderness, yet intensified by love, and the very thought thrills her.

Yet, her old fear breaks through a little, of all his passion focused, concentrated on her, perhaps crushing her underneath its tidal wave. So she casts her eyes down, her hands upon his chest to keep them from trembling, eager to learn but also afraid. 

"It's... it's not that I don't want--don't mistake me for a coward--"

"Shh. I'm sorry." He hugs her close. "It is not yet your wedding night, and here we are, talking of acts even some courtesans would blanch at. I apologise."

She knows his answer, but she still has to ask, her fingers playing at the velvet of his robe. "Will you be gentle?"

His smile is warm, his hands on her hair worshipful. "The gentlest of lovers ever to have bedded a woman." 

She glances up from underneath her lashes. "And a pageboy?"

He slaps her buttocks and grins. "You know, my dear, I don't think you are nearly as delicate as you would have me believe. But first things first." He gets up to leave, but not before he traces her bottom lip with his thumb, his eyes lazy with lust. "Think of tomorrow." He drags his thumb down her chin, her neck, breasts, belly, all the way down between her legs. She gasps, her hands clutching his shoulders as he finds her mound, pressing, rubbing its cleft through the thin silk of her shalwars. He kisses her ear, his wet lips, wet tongue flicking against it with a purr. "Think of me _licking_ this little slit. Good night, my dear."

And then he is gone, and her hands are clutching the sheets, her knuckles white with frustration.

***

The wedding day passes her in a haze. Again, she observes herself from the outside as the women prepare her at the baths: every hair on her torso, her legs, her genitals shaved and plucked, every inch of her skin rubbed with creams, perfumed. They rinse her even from the inside, Halima (well-versed in medical lore, they tell her) insisting half in Latin, half in Arabic that it will help _coitus_ if the _rectum_ is empty as she pushes Yassamin onto _quadrupes_ and penetrates her _anus_ with a syringe. She's rinsed twice, thrice, until the water runs clear, and she swears Halima's oiled fingers linger just a little too long as she inspects her behind for cleanliness, her vulva for any last hairs.

"My, my, yours _is_ a pretty one, isn't it?" Halima laughs, slapping Yassamin's cunny before she withdraws, the other girls tittering nervously. When Yassamin turns around to glare at them, Halima meets her eyes boldly, her mouth open and red with a lascivious hunger, just like her master's. "Don't worry, my dear. I'm sure he is watching us in his crystal right now, and would have my head if I enjoyed you before he did." Halima runs her eyes up and down her body, nodding in approval. "Yes, I think he will enjoy you indeed."

Yassamin grabs a towel and covers herself, hurriedly. "Is that everything?"

"Yes, that is everything." 

***

She is still in a haze during the wedding procession, during the ceremonies, of being declared queen. Only when the bridal canopy is unrolled over her head, only when Jaffar joins her underneath it and lays his hand on hers is she aware of her body again. She's felt cold all day, and his hand feels like a brand, the hunger with which it clutches her shocking her back into consciousness.

"Daydreaming, my queen?" His eyes are twinkling with amusement.

"I'm sorry." For the first time during the ceremony, she looks at him properly, truly looks at him and wonders how she could have ever thought him repulsive. He's wrapped head to toe in white brocade, his body glimmering with gold as he moves to sit beside her, lissome as a cat. His eyes, heavy with kohl, sparkle with happiness and she no longer fears drowning in them, no, but sees her own joy reflected in them. Above their heads, her relatives begin the ritual of grinding sugar loaves over the canopy, to bless their union with sweetness. And as the sugar is being ground, it's as if her past is being ground to powder, cracked, eroded, for a new future to begin. Scratch-scratch, her girlhood crumbles, her innocence, her fears, her dreams of Ahmad. There is but Jaffar, his white and gold, under a white and gold sheet, under a white and gold rain of sugar and the petals of spring flowers. 

It's then that she leans over, whispers into his ear, her words falling softly like sugar. _"I love you."_

He just looks at her, smiles, trembles and squeezes her hand so tight she fears he will break her fingers. He blinks, rapidly, trying to dry his tears before they make his kohl run and kisses her hand. Black tears fall on her sleeve nevertheless and she lets them, black tears and his breath whispering his reply: "I love you, Yassamin, daughter of Mahmoud."

Not Abbasa, no; when he lifts his gaze, he murmurs "Yassamin" once more and her fears slide off her like petals now fall from her hair, scattering at her feet. 

She yearns to kiss him, but it would not be proper in public, no, and she remembers the illicit kiss he had promised, staring at his red lips, the way he licks them, licks them. Heat pools between her legs and she reaches for the honey, in the ancient rite of bride and groom feeding each other. If she cannot paint his lips with herself, this she can do: she dips her finger into the bowl and slowly, sensuously and not at all properly she paints his lips with honey, paints them until they are gleaming. His eyes flash and he _moans,_ his male friends erupting into laughter, knowing, filthy. She pulls her hand back and casts her eyes down, blushing as they say things like "You'd better be careful, Jaffar, she is taking charge already," "A feisty one you've married," and "This one owns you body and soul." 

Jaffar but smiles, fondly, and with a lascivious gleam in his eye, he scoops up some honey with his finger and lifts it to her lips. "My friends, she can use my body _any way she likes._ " 

She has no choice but to meet his challenge, tasting him, kissing the honey off his finger with slow deliberation. The raucous noises of the men grow louder, until she finishes off with a _bite,_ the men exploding in a cacophony of cheering and howling. Jaffar himself sits, staring, coiled tight with lust like a hunting-pard about to pounce, stares at her for long moments with his finger between her teeth. Finally, he shivers, hisses, sucking the rest of the honey off himself, never taking his eyes off hers. He takes her hand and grins.

"I think it's time my queen took her king to bed, don't you?"


	10. Chapter 10

Jaffar locks the door behind them and walks--no, _leaps_ into the bedroom, smiling and laughing as he closes her in his arms. 

"Jaffar!" she laughs into his shoulder as he hugs her tight. "I've never seen you this happy."

"And why shouldn't I be? It is the happiest day of my life."

 _That's a lie they tell brides,_ she thinks, to make them less scared of being married off to a man they don't even know. It's a phrase her father had used when he was about to marry her to Jaffar, one that had made her burst into tears. But for Jaffar to truly feel it--and then she cannot think any more, only yelp. For Jaffar has lifted her off her feet like a doll and he spins her, spins her until she is dizzy, until he staggers and carries her to the bed and they both collapse onto it, laughing. 

She strokes his cheek with the back of her hand. It's like a dream she had had, and now she can't breathe--

"My sweet, why are you crying?"

"It's just that I had this fantasy in my mind, several, of my wedding day. The folly of all women, I suppose." She casts her eyes down. "That my new husband would lift me, carry me to bed." She looks back up at him, turning her fingers inwards, now, undoing a pin from his turban. 

"Well, then. I'm very glad to have made it come true." But he hesitates, a shadow flashing across his face. _It was not me you imagined, was it?_ his eyes are saying, the pain weakening his smile a little. They both know whom they are thinking of: Ahmad, now settled in Debal with Abu. It had been Ahmad she had imagined taking her to bed, that is certain, but now the very idea terrifies her. So she finds herself clutching Jaffar's tunic, her tears turning into those of panic. "Promise me they will never come back, Jaffar, promise--"

Jaffar is stunned, even flattered, petting her hair, kissing away her tears. "I promise. Why do you ask?"

She swallows and undoes another pin. Something in her is ashamed, ashamed that she had been lying to herself for so long. She would rather not answer him, but she must. No more hesitation, no more lies, no more barriers between them. It's hard to find the right words to describe what she feels, and she fears she sounds ridiculous, fears she is stating the obvious. "Because I am--"

"Yes?"

"Because I am _happy_ ," she says, astonished, as if she now realises it for the first time. Yes, happy. She laughs, a little nervously, unravelling the rest of his turban. He helps her between kisses, finally lacing his fingers with hers.

"Happy?"

She nods. "Happy."

"Well, then. I promise to make you even happier, if it is in my power to do so."

"You already are." She kisses his fingers. "And I want to do the same to you."

"Now, _that_ is a dangerous desire, my dear," he chuckles, his eyes warm with lust. "You should see the fantasies I have had of _you_." He licks his lips (still so red, still so wet, the sight of them making her press her thighs tighter together).

She licks her lips in turn, as if his lasciviousness had now infected her, suffused her with its warmth now spreading like ink into her every limb. "Tell me."

He sits up, idly playing with the buttons on her jacket, almost shy. "There is one sight I dreamt of. You, in my chamber, standing before me as a bride." He flicks his eyes up, pauses. "Undressing for me."

It's not quite a command, but the need in his eyes cuts right through her, cuts out and eliminates every possible reaction that could've ended with her saying "No." It's as if his speaking the request has merely made her aware of her acquiescence. No, not acquiescence but _desire_ \--a desire she did not know she possessed until he invoked it, called it into existence with his own. His desire so much more powerful than hers, his will and discipline those of a master of magics--and by loving her, he is now awakening, cultivating the same desires and powers within her. _This is how he is,_ she thinks. _He has taken me before I even know it._ And there is nothing she wants more now than to be taken, to give, sliding to her feet as if in a trance.

So she stands there, next to the bed, silent, awaiting his word. He smiles, kicking off his slippers, preparing himself a cup of wine, letting her wait. He enjoys this as a cat enjoys a bird fluttering in its paws, letting the tension build, letting her quiver a little as he makes himself comfortable on his cushions, enjoying the view. 

"Slowly."

His eyes burn into hers over the brim of his cup as she undoes her headdress, her veil with quivering hands. Pin by tinkling pin, her innocence is scattered onto the floor and with every strand of hair loosened from her braids, her inhibitions. And he, the one taking, never says a word, just stretches upon the bed, his eyes full of delight. He encloses her within his gaze, its heat making her skin flush even as she is stripped bare. The way he tilts his head as he inspects her makes her drip down to her thighs, shivering as she lowers her shalwars. The wet stains on them, her scent but a few handspans away from his face, and she can see his nostrils flaring. 

And then, it is done. She stands naked before him, but a gold torque around her neck; an ancient, heathen relic heavy upon her collarbones. She struggles with it, worried she might break it if she bends it too much. 

He tuts, raises his hand, almost touching her, almost.

"Leave it on." He smirks. "I like the way you look wearing it."

She frowns. "Like a slave girl?"

His voice is serious, now, low with veneration. "Like a _queen._ "

So she drops her hands to her sides, stands there, stands and breathes. Virgin, wife, _queen._

He sets his cup down and gazes at her, long, from her head to her feet and back again. "You are beautiful," he whispers. And she is reminded of the way he had looked at her on his ship, that first time, how he had raised her above himself as if onto a pedestal, his hands hovering over her breasts in worship. 

And it is worship he gives her, now, looking at her with so much love it's hard for her to stand still. He gets up and circles her, takes her in, nuzzles the perfume from her hair, runs his fingertip up her spine, making her lift onto her toes. "Beautiful," he kisses against her cheek, "Beautiful," upon her breasts, "Beautiful," upon her belly as he kneels before her. 

With trembling hands, she caresses his hair, gasps as his lips hover over her mound, then descend to kiss her hip. She smiles, pushing back into his kiss, quirking her eyebrow. "'Beautiful'?"

He nods, returning her smile. "I think you'd better lie down and show me."

He gets up and takes her hand, adores her as she lies down on the bed. It's his gaze that somehow makes her movements softer, fuller, rounder, now, more languid as she stretches herself out upon the sheets. _I'm going to pour pleasure over you like honey,_ he had promised her the night before, and now he is doing so, barely having touched her. His love is poured over her, and she glows.

And it is he who is pleasure itself, a pleasure to her eyes as he undresses himself. He watches her watching him, pulling off tunic, sash and shalwars, revealing his body as she had revealed hers. He must be somewhat self-conscious about his age, about his thinness, but he hides it well. He needn't worry, for she finds him--"Beautiful," she laughs, beckoning to him with her hand, welcoming him into her arms with the deepest of kisses.

And it's in her embrace she measures her Jaffar: his long brown limbs, his long muscles, long sinews and finds them pleasing to the touch. She presses her body against his, her soft warmth a perfect match for his lean hardness, one tempering the other until they are a complete human being, pliance and strength, all beauty.

There, they wrestle for long moments, taking and yielding, one pinning the other down to drink their kisses, their legs clasped around each other's until they are both panting, both burning.

"Show me," he repeats, feverish, short of breath as he lifts her thighs upon his shoulders, as he kisses his way down her stomach. "Show me your _cunny._ "

She grabs his hair and pulls him up for another kiss, hard and rough, moaning into his mouth. "Then, look," she urges, without shame, spreading her legs wide for him to see.

"My God--" he spreads her with his thumbs, greedy, inspecting every curve, every fold. "I imagined you would be beautiful, but--"

"Halima called it pretty," she says, blushing. She'd seen other women at the baths, had caught flashes of other women's genitals. She'd seen many cunnies; pink, red, brown, but only today had she been told hers was beautiful, and she wants to know why. "I thought she was teasing me."

"Oh, but you do look so delicious when teased," he smirks. He lies down on his stomach between her legs, running his fingertips over her mound, down her slit, his touch so soft and so barely there. He repeats the motion and she gasps, her hips lifting off the bed, following his caress. 

"And delicious down here... it's so full, you see," he whispers reverently, never taking his eyes off it. "The inner folds so little they are completely hidden until one does this--" and he spreads her with his thumbs once more, murmuring softly as he gazes upon her. "Where most women's resemble flowers with their petals, yours is soft and even, like a peach. Until it's split," he adds, with a wicked lick of his lips that makes her shiver.

"Is it... abnormal, then?" 

"Oh, no, no, no," he chuckles, his breath soft against her wetness, "It is extraordinarily beautiful. Would you let me kiss it?"

"Oh--" He had truly meant what he had said, then. _The pleasures of the mouth,_ so sinful they are barely even spoken of in love manuals, medical texts, and even then as the most dreadful of perversions. They are things wicked djinn might enjoy in order to suck a mortal's life force out. Yet Jaffar had enjoyed Amila's mouth upon him, had requested it especially, had wanted her to sin with him. She remembers the way his head had fallen back on the pillows, remembers the rough moans that had escaped his lips as Amila had taken him with her mouth. And now he is offering the same pleasure to _her_ , nuzzling her mound, the scratch of his moustache making her hips lift once more. 

"Please," she asks, her hands flat and stiff against the mattress.

He dips his tongue into her slit and moans, lapping at the sweetness there, moans again as if the very taste of her was too much for him to bear. It's his reaction that shocks her more than the sensation, as pleasant as it is: the way his lashes fall upon his cheeks, the way his entire body trembles as if with chills. Years of longing are undone, unravelled with the kiss he now presses to her cunny, and it's not the wetness of her body he drinks but fulfillment itself. All her rejections fall from him, the act she now allows him become mercy itself, every sweet lick of his tongue a _"Thank you,"_ an _"I love you,"_ every moan an _"I adore you."_

And his tongue, oh, his tongue--the pleasure she now feels is so intense it is akin to panic: inescapable, terrifying, her nerves so stimulated her first instinct is to yank her hips back from the sensation. Her head tosses, her hands grab at the sheets, at his hair, incoherent noises bubbling from her throat. She's overloaded, flooded with sensations, his tongue and his lips greedy in their desire to drink her up, to possess that which has been so long denied to them. She almost screams "Stop," but cannot. It's only when he moves away from her clitoris that she has a chance to gulp in air: he sucks, mouths her inner labia instead, delighting in that which remains hidden to everyone except the lover. He, _her lover,_ and he rubs his hips against the sheets, slipping and dipping his tongue inside of her, in soft mimicry of the way he would take her with his cock. 

It's then that she clutches his head with her thighs and cries out, carding her fingers through his hair. The ache in her is too great and she cannot wait any longer. "Please, Jaffar." 

He looks up at her, his mouth, his chin wet from her. It's as if he is about to ask if she is sure, but she presses a finger to his lips. She has read of the eye-language of lovers, and knows a man of Jaffar's learning must know of it, too. So she flicks her eyes in a _please, I need you_ , urges him to lie on top of her, _please_. And it is as she had hoped, for he now answers her with a smile and _slow, my love, slow_ , his lashes writing tenderness upon her belly, her breasts, her cheeks as he covers her with his body. She pulls him down for a kiss, the hungriest of kisses, nipping at the pomegranate-red of his lips, sucking his cunny-sweet tongue into her mouth. And now it is he who cries into her mouth, his cock trapped between his belly and her mound, rocking against her hot, slick.

He pulls back, trembling, cupping her face in his hands, searching her eyes. And in them, she gives him her answer: _Take me,_ guides her hand between their bodies, her little hand on the thick weight of his cock, _please_. She swallows down her fear and spreads her legs, spreads them, guides him to her entrance. 

He staggers, balances with his hands on the bed, trying not to thrust into her. He bites his lip, as if stricken with a sudden sorrow that the wait is now over, that he should now have to give her pain instead of pleasure. Once more, he asks for her permission with his eyes, once more he hesitates, the head of his cock nestled between her folds. 

_Please._ She strokes his back with her free hand, strokes his buttocks, urging him closer. It's then that he closes his eyes once more-- _slow_ , the long blink of it full of tenderness, _slow_ , as he begins to move his hips. 

So she lets go of his cock, closes her eyes and breathes deep, her arms around his neck and she breathes once more. There is pain, yes, but it is as if he feels it, too, huffing against her cheek every time her muscles clutch so tight he cannot move into her. Something in her flesh gives, tears and she stifles a cry into his shoulder, he stilling completely, kissing her cheek, murmuring wordless apologies into her ear. She wonders if this is what all women feel with him, virgin or no, the very size of him so monstrous. It feels impossible to take him in and she feels inadequate, now she the one murmuring apologies at her inability to accommodate him. Her muscles clutch once more, even if the pleasure of friction is now greater than the dull pain of her lost maidenhood. 

"Do you want me to stop?" he finally asks in words, worry in his eyes. 

She breathes deep, shifts lower down on the bed, shakes her head. "No." She wants him even if it hurts, wants him inside her and with a touch of the madness of the lover, now thinks she would feel incomplete without him inside her.

He pulls back a little, glancing down. "There isn't much blood," he laughs nervously, apologetically, strokes her cheek with the backs of his fingers. "You're a brave girl." And strangely, it reminds her of a surgeon performing an operation on a child, complimenting her for not screaming too much. And even more strangely, the way Jaffar says it, it doesn't feel condescending at all. He is so self-conscious of his size and she is sure he still fears she thinks him a monster. He is not at all the terrifying ravisher, now, but an awkward lover trying to please his beloved, ashamed of his own body. Reality is not at all like the stories of insatiable women who had turned to donkeys in their heat and Jaffar must know that: how many women have turned him down on sight or driven him away after it turned out he would give them pain rather than the pleasure they had sought? Or maybe this never happened, and she is just imagining it, exaggerating it because she is still so inexperienced, small?

But all these thoughts distract her and he notices, leans over her again and kisses her softly, gathering her against his body. She wraps her arms around him, kisses him back and finds she is not in so much pain after all: she is stretched, yes, overwhelmed, yes, still struggling to breathe. But the way he now undulates on top of her, rolls his hips feels wonderful, wonderful--the experience behind his movements excites her further, helps her relax into his embrace. It feels so good she surprises herself with her moans, now close to what she thinks might be whorish. The thought of Jaffar with courtesans, with experienced, older women who know how to take him, slick and wet around him--oh, now she knows where that fantasy of his comes from, and fancies herself becoming one of those women. The thought of herself as not a chaste princess but a whore, one of those courtesans who became queens makes her slick and wet in turn, moaning even louder into his ear. 

"Better?" he chuckles in delight. He meets her new wetness with longer thrusts, sliding ever deeper inside her, a little faster now, if still careful.

"Yes," she breathes, leaning into his thrusts, "But how does it feel for you?" 

"Wonderful," he murmurs, his eyes slitted with ecstasy. 

"But you're holding back?"

"Mmm. But that's part of why it feels so wonderful," he smiles and again he blinks, _slow._

 _Faster,_ she dares blink back, fluttering her lashes rapidly.

He raises his eyebrow in challenge, more force behind his thrust now, making her scream and arch back on the bed.

"Did I hurt--"

She gropes for his arms. "No, don't stop, don't--" and she pushes her hips up, rocking herself onto his cock. "Oh, God, _Jaffar._ "

It's then that he _growls,_ pressing her into the bed, truly fucking her. Yes, _fucking_ , she is being _fucked_ , she thinks dizzily as ululating moans spill out of her mouth onto the pillows. Stretched, opened, _trained_ , trained with the skill of a man who knows how to turn virgin into whore. It hurts, by God, it hurts, but it feels wonderful at the same time, his entire weight slamming into her now, throwing her into the mattress and pinning her there. And now it's he who shouts, louder than her, shaking, spasming, watching in disbelief as his cock sinks into her cunny. 

"You feel so good, oh, God, I don't think I can hold back--"

And she doesn't want him to, wrapping her legs around him, claiming him with her mouth, sobbing from how much she loves him. And she has to say it, moan it, breathe it, bite it into his mouth: "I love you," groan under his thrusts, pull his hair, give as fiercely as she is taken. "I love you," she keens in his face, with so much force it's like rage. It's as if pleasure twists all her emotions together like the swordsmith twists layers of steel, making the cut keener, sharper, and now she truly knows what love means. Finally, finally there is no doubt of it in her mind, Jaffar moving into her and it's as if she has always wanted him to, always needed him to be like this, covering her, entering her, his love wrapped around her like a protective spell. It's the most powerful of magics, of transformations and it is a new Yassamin that now holds him, her limbs sheltering around him as he falls apart inside her. His entire body spasms, spasms again, his hips slamming so deep into her he truly hurts her, but she does not care. 

And then, he is still. His face is buried in her shoulder, wet from tears, his heaving breaths intertwining with the aftershocks of his orgasm. "I love you," he whispers, helpless, "You came back for me, and I love you--" and now he cannot stop crying, so much pain finally loosened from him, set free, flowing down in his sobs, tears over her shoulder, her neck, her breasts. And she holds him through his weeping, kissing his tears, hushing him gently, holding him inside her body until he softens.

She holds him until he is quiet, then curls up in his arms, watches over him until the last of his tears dry, until his breathing evens. For long moments, they stay there, and she does not know when it is that she stops watching him and he starts watching her. He smiles a little, cupping his hand protectively over her mound. "I did not hurt you too much, did I?" he asks, guilt still flitting over his face. There's blood on his fingers, on his cock, on the sheets, only small stains but enough to worry him. 

She shakes her head. "My monthly flow hurts more." She nuzzles his face and smiles. "And there's no pleasure mixed within it."

"I would still like to give you more," he says, his lips upon her shoulder. "It seems I got mine, but you did not get yours," he murmurs, dipping his fingers lazily between the folds of her cunny, stroking there. "It's only fair." 

When she whimpers, lifts her hips to meet his caress, the old, lascivious smile spreads upon his lips again, lips now even redder from her bites. "Oh, yes." Slowly, slowly he lifts strings of her wetness, of sperm, of blood from her cunny, a cat's cradle glistening in the lamplight. Thus, he shows her herself: proof that Yassamin is a virgin no more, proof of her adult lust, proof of his claim on her. _This is how much you want me,_ written there in their mixed fluids, undeniable, true. And admitting that is a relief: there's to be no more struggling with her heart, no more second-guessing herself, him. 

So she smiles into his kiss, clasps his hand to her cunny, keeping it there. "Yes." There's still warmth in her hips, his fingertips stirring it into true heat once more. And it's the heat that gives her new confidence, reminding her she is now no longer a girl, no longer a princess but a grown woman, the _shahbanu_ to his _shah_. 

Thus, her voice firm and a lazy smile on her lips, she gives her first command as queen. "Pleasure me, Jaffar."

And oh, the look in his eyes, now fully awake, aware. She grins at him and he grins back in delight at a game initiated--had he himself not asked her to command him, once? He lifts himself a little and she sees his cock stir against his thigh a little, half-hard. What flashes through her, at that moment, is not just passion but a sense of her power: to have him react so just from three half-playful words. To have a king now kneeling between her legs, serving her pleasure, his greatest yearning to satisfy her--oh, why did she resist this so long? She asks him this, asks him how she could have been such a fool.

He nuzzles her cunny and smiles. "I am glad you warmed to me, eventually." 

"I was frightened of your eyes," she murmurs as if in a trance, stroking his temples. "They are the most beautiful and the most terrifying eyes I have ever seen, eyes the colour of poisons. They are human and not human, they are a man's and a woman's, and sometimes I have wondered if you were a djinni."

He gives her a long lick, long, before he answers her. "A magician must straddle all worlds. Human, djinn, male, female." 

And she wonders, wonders at his implication, until he closes his lips around her clitoris and _sucks._ "Oh--" She is so sensitive now, and every suck makes her shudder, makes her hips twitch, makes her moan God's name into the canopies. "Don't stop."

"I won't." He only pauses to suck on two fingers and gently, oh so gently he rocks them inside her, past the pain, leaning down to suck and lap at her once more. And all the while, he keeps his eyes on her, transfixing her with his gaze and with his fingers, his mouth, trapping her in a cage of pleasure until she has no choice but to sob, thrash against her confinement. She is panting, shuddering all around him, so close, yet never reaching the peak. "Please--" she groans in frustration, bunching her hands into fists. "I'm sorry, I can't--"

"Shhh." He pulls his fingers out, murmuring fondly. "Show me how you do it. How you pleasure yourself."

She is so frustrated she does it before shame can change her mind. With a groan, she turns onto her stomach and rides her hands, the full weight of her hips upon her clitoris. Oh, but that's better; even if her cunny is so swollen, so wet it's never been like this before, and it is hard for her to find just the right spots. It's how she rode his thigh, pleasure shooting through her, except it's more intimate, now, even when he doesn't touch her. Oh, but she's close. She can feel his breath as he leans down between her thighs to inspect her, to watch the play of her hands upon her cunny; she gasps as he spreads her buttocks. He laughs, wickedly, and it's enough to start the ripples of orgasm within her, yes, she thinks she might be there--

\--and he pushes a finger inside her arse, maybe two, effortlessly, and she _screams_ into the pillows. She bucks back onto his finger--fingers--hard, screaming and screaming as her orgasm thunders through her body. And he does not stop, hooking his fingers inside her until her eyes roll back in her head, until she loses sight, hearing. He presses and presses and she is suddenly so wet, her hands slipping as she convulses underneath him, upon his fingertips. She hears her own noises as if from behind a door, little wails breaking in her throat, pleading for him to stop, pleading for him to withdraw. She takes her shaking hands from between her legs, clutches the sheets, staining them, still reflexively rutting her hips against the bed.

Finally, finally he withdraws, chuckling, lying down beside her. When she opens her eyes, he is sucking her taste off his fingers and she shudders at the sight, at his shamelessness, his perversion. "You're a monster," she groans, sinking her face into the pillows.

He gathers her close, stretching against her in satisfied delight. "And you, my dear, are a little _sodomite."_ His body is hot against hers and she realises she is shivering, with goosebumps all over, her entire nervous system still in a chaos from the intensity of her orgasm. 

He rubs her shoulder. "But you're freezing. Let me get some wine."

She tugs at the bedcovers and curls up in his arms, nestles into his warmth. "No. Stay." With the cold, she feels a strange melancholy, a need to be held. "Please?"

"All right."

And so they lie there, dozing, not speaking, enjoying each other's warmth, his hand slow upon her shoulder. She can feel he is half-hard against her, but he seems to be enjoying his arousal: there is no frustration in the way he holds her, only tenderness. Never did she imagine he could hold a woman like this, that he could truly cherish her like this, thinking her more than just a plaything. There are so many things she wants to ask Jaffar, to learn about him, but she doesn't want to break the happiness of the moment. 

There will be time enough later. 


	11. Chapter 11

It is only when she feels a cold, wet splash on her buttocks that Yassamin is startled awake. She turns around to find Jaffar has returned to the bed with a damp towel and a cup of wine. 

She yawns and stretches. "I'm sorry. I didn't even realise I'd fallen asleep."

"You needed it. Here, drink this and spread your legs," he says, handing the cup to her while he proceeds to clean her up. 

"Yes, master," she laughs and leans back with her cup. He shoots her an amused glare from between her legs, teasing with his towel a little until she squirms, giggles. 

She strokes his back with her foot. "You know, I could get used to being served like this."

"Is that so? I once heard a princess--one very much resembling yourself--say that for her, there was no more pleasure in the world than pleasing her beloved."

She looks into her cup, at her reflection in it, and does not find that princess there. "Don't be cruel, Jaffar. I wish you would not talk of Ahmad. He is gone, forgotten."

He kisses her foot. "I'm sorry."

She looks up, hurt, suddenly fragile. "Are you still jealous? Jaffar, know that I am yours. What more evidence do you need than the one on that very towel?"

He tosses the towel away, taking her cup and setting it down. "I said I am sorry. Come here." He sits next to her and pulls her into his arms. "I was speaking of you rather than him. I want to know what it is that _you_ desire." He kisses her hair. "So I can give it to you, just like I promised."

She rests her hand on his stomach. "I quite liked being served." She slides her hand down lower, lower, her fingertips skimming the short-cropped hair at his groin. "It's true I might enjoy serving, too. I've never tried it."

He clasps her hand in his. "Any role you wish to play, I will cherish it."

Her heart skips a beat. "And you?"

He walks his fingers up her chest, to the torque resting around her neck. "I would serve both queen and slave girl." His eyes meet hers and he gazes at her for a long while. "For me, there would be no more pleasure in the world than to please _you._ " And he does not quote her to mock her: he is so sincere, his eyes so fathomless in their emotion she dare not move. Again, he has taken her before she even knows it, because to deny him would be unthinkable. To deny him would be to act against her own desires, everything she wants to find out about herself. To deny him would be to break him, set loose a storm that would devour all.

"I would serve you..." he murmurs and wraps his fingers around the torque, lifting it, his knuckles curling against her throat, stopping her breath. "And _master you,_ if that should be your wish." He picks up her gaze with his and it's like looking into the eyes of some terrible god: his will is absolute, unquestionable, unshakeable, he himself nothing but power, command.

Panic explodes inside her, her heart fluttering in her chest, her eyes flying wide. This is the Jaffar she had feared, the ravisher, the monster of her nightmares. But it is different, now, the lover offering the monster for her servant: she knows she could stop him with a word, a gesture, couldn't she--couldn't she? She touches his wrist with three fingertips, gives him the glance of _stop_ , a quick dart of her eyes, unmistakable. 

With a soft laugh, he loosens his grip, warmth flooding back into his eyes and she is wet between her legs once more. She was right, right, but has to test it, has to be sure. So she climbs into his lap, curls his hand around her torque again and flicks her eyes-- _please_ \--and then lets her lashes fall. _Slow._

His eyes narrow slowly, slowly just as his hand curls upon her throat slowly, cutting out her breath. Her pulse thunders in her ears and she knows she is staring, knowing she can stop him but doesn't, doesn't. So they sit there, for long seconds, unmoving, all except for his cock stirring, stirring into cruel hardness between her legs, her cunny clenching, slickening against it in surrender.

Finally, she chokes, taps at his shoulder, flicks her eyes in _stop._

"Yassamin," he breathes in astonishment as he lets go, as if it had been his breath that had been stopped. "Oh, my sweet," he laughs in delight and pulls her into his arms. It's as if he has never done this before, as if he has dreamt of it, looking at her as if she was a dream herself, a fantasy come to life in the shape of a woman. And she sways on top of him, dizzy from lack of air, from what she has just discovered about herself: pleasure rushing through her as she takes in fresh breaths, hardening her nipples, making her cunny swell and slide wet upon his cock, so aroused it _hurts._

"What is happening?" she whispers, as if still half-dreaming.

He chuckles, a little stunned himself, brushing her hair away from her face. "I think we are learning." 

"More," she moans in her newfound desire for Jaffar the tyrant, impatient, guiding the tip of his cock inside herself. "More, my king," she demands, shivers as she sinks onto him. _It hurts,_ she signals with her eyes, with her smile. _More._

And oh, the look in his eyes when he realises, the way they narrow into thin slits; oh, the sharpness of his smile. 

He sweeps her hair into his fists and twists, hisses. "You would serve my pleasure, girl?"

"Yes," she sobs, pain flashing through her from her scalp, her wounded cunny, pain enveloped in sweetness the way she now envelops him inside herself, paints his cock with her slickness. 

He snaps his hips, his smile wide and wicked. "Then, ride me," he laughs, triumphant. " _Ride_ me, girl." 

And she does, sobbing once more, pleasure now flooding all of her, washing over the pain. Her every limb drinks in ecstasy like the sand soaks the tide, until she is saturated with it. And all throughout, Jaffar's hands twist in her hair with sweet cruelty, his eyes stare into hers with fierce love, with absolute command. Drunkenly, she wonders if he is not hypnotising her and finds she does not care: with his eyes, with his hips he guides her movements, teaches her how to dance upon his cock. And gladly, she is taught, trained, opening herself with deep breaths, crying out from the depths of her entire body as he penetrates her as deep as a man can penetrate a woman. She shudders around him in release, tears escaping her eyes at what he is giving her, and knows there can be no other master for her. For in his teaching he gives all of himself, his own body the instrument of the art of love, shaping her into the woman she now knows she has always wanted to be. 

Her tears run down his wrists, his upraised arms and in her delirium, she fears she might die here, now, like lovers in old stories, from the acute pain of their joining. Like the mystics describe the soul's merging with God, the lover being dissolved in the Beloved, the moth's silent joy as its wings burn up with a single sudden, bright, clear flame. And still, his fingers twine in her hair, still he rocks his hips into her, still he whispers her name.

"Yassamin," he calls her back to herself; "Yassamin," gives her back to herself from his heart with his kisses, gives her back her name by breathing it into her mouth; "Yassamin."

And she kisses him back, her magician, her shaper, the one whose breath has given her life. His hands loosen in her hair and without a word, she slides down his body, instinctively, naturally: there is no sin to the act she now performs for him, the deep, open-mouthed kiss she gives his cock. And now it is he who is the one trembling, shaking under her caresses: fervently, he combs her hair away from her face to better see her, watch her as she takes him into her mouth.

"My sweet," he cries and she tastes him, herself, his own alkaline slickness upon her tongue. But it's the softness of his skin that makes her moan around him; his skin as soft as a woman's over the most masculine part of him. He is so full, so hard she can only fit a part of him into her mouth, her jaw aching as he stretches her mouth with his slow, slick thrusts. 

But the noises he makes, oh, the noises: they're animal sounds, rough in his throat, sharp in his nose, disgusting and terrifying. And maybe it's Abbasa's ghost in her, that of the she-libertine that so enjoys these noises, because she finds herself excited by them, the mewls and the snarls and the grunts. With a perverse delight, she sucks him a little deeper, rubs herself with her hand, drinking in the sounds of her husband debauched.

"Stop, please, I beg of you, stop--" his fingers tremble in her hair.

She pulls off and nuzzles his cock with her lips. "Why?" She wanted to sin to the end, she realises; the libertine wanted his sperm in her mouth, to taste him as completely as he had tasted her. "I want this, Jaffar," she says, stroking him softly with her hand.

"You also wanted something else, and even with aphrodisiacs, I cannot guarantee it if--" he groans, cock pushing slickly through the circle of her fingers. "If you make me come undone now--" he pants, and a part of her wants to, seeing him desperate like this, completely at the mercies of her hand, her mouth.

"Yes?" she asks with the most innocent of voices, already the wanton coquette. He drips onto her hand, pooling slickly between forefinger and thumb, cries out and jerks in her fist. It's then that he throws back his head and murmurs, his hands clenching, unclenching, every part of his body locking up for a second, two, then stilling. 

In awe, she stops touching him, kneels between his legs, realising he has cast a spell upon himself. A string of his pre-ejaculate dangles where she had left it: between his cock and his hard, tight balls, all of him suspended in the moment just before orgasm. Finally, he snaps his eyes open and draws in a stuttering breath, then turns to look at her. 

"Jaffar--" she pauses with her fingers upon her lips, not sure whether to apologise to him, or to scold him.

He laughs. "Come here." 

With one last glance at his cock, she relents and lies beside him. "Did you just... stop it?"

"Not 'it', all of myself. Quite a practical spell, don't you think?"

"You shouldn't have."

He turns to lie on top of her, kissing her, sucking his taste from her tongue. "Mm. Don't think I don't want to spill into this pretty little mouth of yours, my love." 

"Then why didn't you?"

Without a word, he turns her over onto her stomach and smacks her arse, _hard._ "This." He slides on top of her, chuckling, his cock between her buttocks and there is no mistaking his intent. "Does this refresh your memory?"

 _"Oh."_

"Yes," he purrs in her ear. "Jaffar the wine-drenched, heathen sodomite, at your service."

She hides her face in the pillows, more ashamed now that she is faced with the act in reality, not just in theory. The stories she has read of sodomy have been a strange mixture: some sources state it's deeply painful for the recipient and that only the man on top can truly enjoy it. Yet others warn against it, especially the dangers of being on the receiving end. Men can get addicted to it, they say, and it is shameful for a grown man to enjoy being taken. Some even say a man's adulthood is defined by the moment he becomes the penetrator instead of the penetrated, leaving the submissive role to boys and women. 

As for the women, the medical books--all written by men, of course--insist that they can never truly enjoy it, but she has heard of courtesans taking great pleasure in it and not just because they could avoid pregnancy. She knows even of female sodomites, satisfying each other's cunnies and arses with their fingers; women like Halima. Her fingers had certainly been knowing enough, hinting of pleasures known to women of her kind. And what had Jaffar's fingers brought her if not pleasure? 

Jaffar sees her hesitate and kisses her shoulder. "Remember that I promised you gentleness. If you have changed your mind, I will not hold it against you. I will be perfectly happy with just your mouth, my love."

"No, I want to."

"Then, stay still." The bed dips with his weight as he leaves it to investigate the small cabinet beside the bed. "We'll need something to ease the way," he explains over his shoulder, then climbs back into bed with a jar of some sweet-scented ointment she cannot quite recognise. "Here we are." 

She is surprised when the first touch of his slickened hands is upon her back, not her buttocks. Jaffar begins a slow, unhurried massage and she whimpers into the pillows, not having even realised how stiff she has been for the entire day. The scent of the ointment is intoxicating--she can smell roses, sandalwood, perhaps; definitely almonds. And his hands, oh, his hands, so slow and so patient on her back, undoing the knots from her muscles, loosening her spine until she sinks into the mattress, moaning softly in complete relaxation. Even when she can feel his erection against her thigh, he continues his massage, exploring her body, using this act to learn its shapes, where to curl his hands to bring her utmost pleasure. She would weep in delight if she could, if such fiery emotions weren't completely suffocated in the bliss he now gives her. 

"Remind me to return this favour," she mumbles, almost yawning.

"I will," he murmurs, sliding his slickened thumb between her buttocks and pressing there. It slides in easily, so easily she does not even gasp, but she is sure he can feel her cunny clenching in delight, her body welcoming the penetration. Oh, it feels wonderful, wonderful as he twists his thumb, fanning his wet fingers over the tops of her buttocks, slowly pulling, tugging her open. 

With his other hand, he strokes her cheek, smiles down at her. "How does that feel, my love?"

She clasps his hand lightly with hers, kissing it with a smile. "It certainly doesn't hurt."

"It will, later. But I promise to try and make the pain brief. The eventual pleasure will be worth it; I promise that, too."

He dips both of his thumbs in and spreads her, spreads her so that she shivers, now knowing what he meant about the pain as her muscles are pulled open, however gently. She wonders how many boys he has taken like this, how many girls; if he himself has been taken. Goosebumps erupt all over her skin and she slurs her words, thinking to distract herself by asking him. 

"I lay underneath men a few times, as a boy. That's exactly why I am taking you slowly." She can hear the smile in his voice. "I have had a few boys now and then, but have never sodomised a girl. You're my first," he whispers, conspiratorially. 

"I'm honoured," she grins at him over her shoulder. "I look forward to taking your virginity."

"Be gentle," he laughs. He pulls his thumbs out, adding more of the ointment, their body heat turning it liquid until it drips down over her cunny, mixing with her own wetness. Slowly, he twists his thumbs inside her once more, the stretch still uncomfortable but no longer painful. She presses her face into the pillows and groans from deep in her chest, her hips lifting off the bed. 

He chuckles and kisses her buttock. "Better?" Before she can answer, he spreads her even wider and her cunny clenches so hard she can feel herself dripping, dripping on the sheets. She whimpers in her throat, her whimper turning into a wail as he catches the next drops with his tongue, laps and laps at her cunny. Roughly, he pushes more fingers inside her and she doesn't even know how many, but he is taking her with his hand now, his mouth sucking at her cunny, turning her wail into a scream. 

"Three fingers," he growls into her, laps at her, and she shudders so hard she loses her balance and collapses into the bed. 

"Oh, God." She bursts into disbelieving laughter.

He laughs out loud with her, taking his fingers out, sliding on top of her, kissing her gently. "I think that means you're ready, my lady."

She nods. "Try." She lies down on her stomach again.

"No, hold on. Lie down on your side." 

"Like this?" 

"Yes." He scoops up a large handful of ointment, covering his cock with it, pushing the rest of it inside her with his fingers as he moves to spoon her. "It's easier this way. That, and I get to kiss you," he smiles, doing so as he starts to press inside.

And he was right. It _hurts._ It's a pain entirely different to the one of her deflowering; not a short flash but a continuous pain, seemingly endless. It's not a sharp pain, but dull, stiffening her entire body, rendering her unable to speak. It's akin to those times she has gone into shock from illness, or from blood loss: she blanches, dizzy, all her blood rushing out of her limbs, leaving her quivering with cold tremors. How a few fingers could give her so much pleasure and how a cock should give her so much pain, she does not understand, and she thinks of telling him to stop, to give up. But she remembers his promise, the promise of pleasure on the other side. So she tells herself to be brave, tells herself to wait.

"Shh," he whispers, enclosing her within his embrace, his hands petal-soft with tenderness. He moves softly, rocking in and out of her so delicately she is in awe despite her pain. He is such a tall man, a giant, yet he moves into her with a feminine, feline languidity. He pulls out completely at times, scoops wetness from her cunny to ease his way, then pushes in slowly once more, slowly with such unrelenting gentleness the pain is forced to retreat a little. 

"Breathe," he tells her, and she does, deep breaths in and out, in and out as he moves inside her, in and out until the pain transmutes into an ache. An ache, all of her a hot, burning ache around him, half of her wanting to panic, to kick her way out of his arms, half of her wanting to sink down further onto his cock. For long, long moments, she sobs in his arms but he holds her, holds her tight against himself until the lust in her wins, and she forces herself down onto him, wailing in pleasure-pain. 

"Jaffar," she sobs, clawing at the sheets, clawing at him, wild, mad. "Jaffar," she pants, near hyperventilating, and he crushes her against his chest, rocking himself deep inside her, dragging her panic underneath waves of pleasure, drowning it until pleasure is all she can feel. She gulps for air--his cock feels even bigger now, the push of it neverending, a penetration far more brutal, intense, _complete_ than the one before it. She had thought she had felt overfull when he had been in her cunny, but now it truly feels as if he is filling, taking her entire body: every thrust sends tremors all the way to her chest, to her arms, until even her fingertips twitch from the sensation. She does not know what balance is any longer, the memory of a distant earthquake the only thing her mind can compare it with, she having been too young to understand what was going on, the earth suddenly unsteady under her feet.

He tucks his chin over her shoulder, turning her head so he can kiss her, slow, deep. She can barely return his kiss, only capable of lying still, open, _open_.

"Does it hurt still?" he asks, frowning. 

"No. I, oh--" It's only that it overwhelms her, _he_ overwhelms her. She presses her face against his, as much as she can in this position. "Oh, God, Jaffar," she pants, the words tumbling out of her mouth onto his cheek. 

"Your Jaffar loves you," he whispers, sliding his hand to her cunny, stroking there. 

"And I love him," she keens into her own arm, rocking into his hand, onto his cock. "Please, don't stop."

"Shh. I won't." And he doesn't, rubbing her clitoris until she turns boneless in his embrace, losing sense not only of balance but of time, of everything except the ecstasy rolling through her. She is wet, slippery, all of her yielding to his cock. She can't even sob, she is so far gone, all of her concentrated on the heat and width and friction of his cock inside her. The way it pushes and drags through the muscles of her hole, the stretch now sweet instead of painful. The way the head slides past a curve inside her body to press into a spot that blinds her, knife-sharp pleasure cutting through her at each thrust. It's the very spot that makes her so wet, so wet she's never known anything like it before, Jaffar chuckling softly as she trickles between his fingers. She gasps in shock, thinking at first she has wet herself, but Jaffar just laughs and slaps her cunny, slaps it until she is trembling all over, splashing wet all over her thighs. She is still convulsing, trembling in the aftershocks of her orgasm when Jaffar stops moving inside her and kisses her shoulder.

"Shh. That was beautiful." He pets her hair, holding her in his arms for a long while, soothing her. When he finally breaks the silence, his voice is soft, tentative. "Would you ride me again?" he asks. "Or do you want me to stop?"

She turns to face him. "No." She stares, watches him slide out of her, his thick cock so wet and slick from their lovemaking, from oil. _All of that was inside me,_ she thinks and shivers--and shivers once more as she realises how terrible it feels to be empty of him, that she wants to be so filled with him she spills over, wants to tell him to _never stop._

Instead, she says "Please--" but her sentence is cut short, because Jaffar has buried his face between her buttocks and now laps at her hole with ruthless, animal greed. She gasps, clenches in shock, only to have Jaffar push back into her hole with his tongue, chuckling against her, the vibrations of his laughter sending shockwaves of pleasure through her.

"Oh, God. You are a sick old man, sick--"

He smacks her buttock. "And you love me."

"Yes," she murmurs between kisses, as she slicks his cock further, "Yes," as she straddles him once more, guiding his cock between her buttocks. "Yes," as she opens her body to him, penetrates herself with him, he the adoring subject underneath her. Gravity forces him deep within her, deep, deeper than ever before, and a hiccough of pain snaps in her throat. She is forced to balance herself on the bed to stop herself from shaking. "Help me."

"Come here." Softly, he kisses her, softly he spreads her buttocks with his hands, softly he rocks himself inside her. With a slow reverence, he kisses her into his heart again, takes Yassamin away from herself again and in doing so dissolves Jaffar, too, until there is no separation between them, until they are nothing but joy. His movements are her movements, her pleasure his. She rises above him, knowing herself a goddess in the blaze of his heathen eyes, invites him to cup her breasts, so small within the sheltering warmth of his hands. His pulse, hers, together a moth's wings fluttering, and together they burn perfect, bright.

They are so joined she does not know which one of them moves first: whether it's her hand lifting his wrist to her throat or his hand sliding through her palm to the gold torque. With a dizzying inevitability, inexorability his fingers curl around it, his knuckles press against her throat and her breath stops. She chokes, clenches around his cock once, twice, thrice, and the sea of his eyes swallows her whole. 

He flexes his fingers and she drags in a drowning breath, her hand slipping to her clitoris, rubbing, rubbing. He closes his hand once more and she goes taut upon him, staring into his eyes, her slick hand on her cunny the only sound in the room. Again, he loosens his grip and she gasps, gasps for several deep breaths, her orgasm building, climbing in her hips, about to blast through her if she but breathes once more--

And he curls his hand, flicks his eyes in a _wait for me,_ then moves his lips in a silent prayer.

He lets go.

He lets go and she falls.

 _Oh._

She falls and she keeps falling, falling, her orgasm billowing its way through her. Only it does not stop, but climbs again, starts again, she realises, terrified, the exact same convulsions rippling through her body over and over. Even as she drags in breaths on top of him--again, again, sways and sways--again, again, bliss cascading through her, she realises what he has done. He has trapped her, trapped her in the moment of release, and in doing so he has trapped himself in his own, hers, theirs. Her very self is consumed by awe, sweet terror and awe as she looks at him: for he lies underneath her, helpless, coming undone inside her, coming undone inside her, coming undone inside her forever. Forever, his hips thrust into her; forever, his balls lift hard against her buttocks and forever he looks up at her, his eyes full of tears that never fall.

 _Let go,_ she asks him with her eyes, or maybe it is her mind only, for she is trapped in her ecstasy, ablaze still: _Let go, my love,_ she prays, silently, with her heart. 

And it is as if he hears her, for his head snaps back with a pained cry and they're free, spiralling apart. He clutches her arms, shaking underneath her, his tears now running freely down his temples. She falls upon him and he rolls her onto her back, thrusting into her, making her body an altar upon which to offer himself as sacrifice. The arcs of his movements find their end in her, his voice, his very breath a home in her, a last, fluttering cry yielding from his mouth to hers. And it's then, when she loves him so utterly she cannot bear it, she hears her words from a lifetime ago, hears herself say them now: _"Even if I should have to tear through Hell itself, I will come back to find you."_ And in her mind, Jaffar's face flickers, flashes younger, so thin and so full of sorrow, then flickers back into the man he is now, so full of life and happiness. 

Just like then, he stills, cradles her head in his hands; just like then, tenderness makes his voice brittle. _"Know that I would slay Death itself to hold you in my arms."_ But now, it is not a goodbye, not the last time they make love, but the first: and in his kiss, a thousand new beginnings. A thousand new roads flicker into existence, a thousand new journeys await for them to walk hand in hand, together.

Then there are no more tears from him, no more words; only silence. He slips out of her, cradles her, pulls the silks over them like sheltering wings. He enfolds her in his arms, curling his entire body around her, holding her within himself until sleep claims them both.

***

She lies upon the green grass of her father's garden. There is a hand upon her hair, a tender voice in her ear. 

She opens her eyes and her head rests in her husband's lap: she is nestled in his velvets, in his silks. Jaffar smiles down at her, his eyes no longer a sea cursed but one calm and full of love. 

"Yassamin," he whispers, soft as feathers.

He kisses her on the mouth, then, and as their lips touch, all her pasts and futures fall through her like rain. The grays and the browns and the deaths are washed from her memory, dissolved; the doll slips from her hands, dissolves and there is nothing but the present, nothing but Jaffar, nothing but love.

He laces his fingers with hers and whispers against her lips. "Welcome home."

***

END

**Author's Note:**

> Freely rebloggable Tumblr promo post for this fic [here.](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/131851041578/fic-the-past-forgotten-jaffarprincess-nc-17)
> 
> NSFW illustration for the lovemaking scene [here](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/48004998995/illustration-for-the-past-forgotten-better).


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